Every vote counts, except in Florida

Op-Ed The Virginian-Pilot
August 11, 2004

No matter who wins the November presidential election, cross your fingers that the outcome isn’t close.

Given the latest election news coming out of the Sunshine State, that may be the only way to avoid catastrophe.

So uncertain is the reliability of Florida’s new touch-screen voting machines that the Republican Party of Florida has urged its supporters to use absentee ballots.

“Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today,” advised a glossy mailing to Miami-Dade County voters that included a picture of President George W. Bush and a tear-off absentee ballot request form.

This was bad news for the president’s brother, said the St. Petersburg Times, which broke the story.

“The GOP tactic is the reverse of what (Gov. Jeb) Bush and state election experts have said as they have repeatedly opposed Democratic moves, in the Legislature and courts, to require a paper trail on the machines.”

After the 2000 presidential election fiasco, in which it took 36 days, a host of legal appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court decision to determine who won Florida, Congress decided hanging chads had to go.

Lawmakers appropriated $3 billion for election reform, including replacing punch-card and mechanical-lever voting machines. Virginia will use $30 million of its $67 million in federal funds for the task. Still, there are mounting worries that the new technology will prove no better than the old.

After the 2002 elections, the Florida ACLU examined 31 voting precincts using touch-screen voting and determined that the number of votes registered, 17,208, was 8.2 percent lower than the 18,752 people who signed in at the polls.

While it’s possible that some people left without casting a ballot, it’s doubtful that so many would go to the polls and then not vote.

Critics of touch-screen voting urge election officials to create a so-called “paper trail.” One option is to program machines to give voters a paper receipt so that they can verify their vote. Those receipts could then be counted by hand if problems arose.

In the three months remaining, officials in Florida, Virginia and elsewhere should do all in their power to make sure that a reliable, back-up record exists for every voting machine.

The outcome of the 2004 election is far too critical and emotions are running far too high to risk a replay of the 2000 disaster. The voters, not the courts, must decide who leads the nation for the next four years.