Short notice rules out replacing touch-screens in Miami-Dade

By Tania Valdemoro in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel 17 August 2004
Miami In a response to an inquiry from Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, County Manager George Burgess has determined that replacing Miami-Dade's 7,200 touch-screen voting machines with paper ballots and optical scan equipment by the November general election is not possible.

Penelas asked Burgess on Aug. 4 to evaluate whether the county use paper ballots and optical scanners to address public concern over the county's electronic voting machines.

In a memo to Penelas released Monday, Burgess wrote that it would take nine months to a year to properly implement a new voting system, if Miami-Dade commissioners approved such a change.

"At this point in time and given all our preparations to date for the August and November elections, I would be extremely reluctant to convert to a new voting system within only a two-month time frame," Burgess said.

The reliability of the voting machines has been in doubt since the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition revealed in May that Orlando Suarez, director of the county's Information Technology Department, discovered last year that the machines had several software problems.

According to e-mails obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Suarez said he discovered one software flaw caused events logs from certain machines to not record all the events that occurred on the machines. Another flaw caused the machines' serial numbers to be corrupted and misreported in vote image reports.

County Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan repeatedly has said the flaws did not affect the machines' tabulation of election results and extensive logic and accuracy tests conducted Friday revealed no problems with tabulation.

The machines' manufacturer, Omaha-based Election Systems & Software, fixed the flaws with new software that was later certified by Florida election officials in July, said spokeswoman Becky Vollmer.

In a separate memo to Burgess on Saturday, Kaplan wrote that not one of the three possible vendors ES&S, Diebold Election Systems or Sequoia Voting Systems could guarantee the optical scan machines would be delivered by Sept. 1.

Kaplan also wrote if the iVotronics machines were replaced, her department could not educate more than 980,000 registered voters by November on how to use new machines. She said more than 7,000 poll workers and 1,400 county employees would need retraining.

One of Kaplan strongest critics agreed.

"People need to learn we've got to deal with what we have and see what comes of it," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.