Iowan advises Florida election officials
By Deirdre Cox Baker in the Quad Cities Times  22 August 2004

While many public officials in Florida continue cleaning up in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, those in Miami-Dade County are bracing for a storm of another kind.

Four years after Florida was at the epicenter of the 2000 presidential election upheaval, election personnel are working persistently on problems associated with the state’s controversial $25 million touch-screen, paperless voting system. Those involved include a University of Iowa professor and a former Quad-City resident.

Douglas W. Jones, an associate professor of computer science at Iowa, is a consultant to the Miami-Dade County Elections Commission. Constance Andrew Kaplan, a 1971 graduate of Augustana College in Rock Island, is the county’s commissioner of elections, having been hired in July 2003.

Jones has emerged as a national expert on computer election systems and security, and he passionately believes in making the voting process as fair, democratic and secure as possible.

To that end, he served for 10 years on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems and did pro bono work for minority proponents such as the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, earning the nickname the “Yoda” of voting.

His interest was academic in nature until the 2000 elections, he said. Since then, he has become a strong proponent of secure election equipment that can be audited.

“I want voting systems that you can audit with the same rigor as the books of a corporation,” he said. “I want my vote counted as accurately as I want my bank to count my dollars, with the same quality.”

Jones detests the touch-screen, paperless voting system that has been installed in Florida, which is the main reason why Miami-Dade County hired him as a consultant.

“The county wanted his perspective,” said Seth Kaplan, the executive assistant to the supervisor of elections. (He is not related to Constance Kaplan, who is his boss). “We’ve done extensive work within our organization to come up with the best process possible, but it’s healthy to have an outside perspective as well.”

Jones has issued a number of recommendations, some of which have been implemented. For example, the three counties in Florida that were highly criticized in the aftermath of 2000 election — Miami/Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — ran advance tests on 418 voting machines before a primary election early this month.

While the tests were somewhat controversial, he said they were better than doing nothing and noted that, no matter what the officials do, Florida elections will probably be contentious.

The number of election observers has greatly increased there, and he believes that will help point out errors that previously went unnoticed. “There’s a possibility that we will see a more accurate, and yet controversial, review,” he added.

Some connected with the Florida election have suggested residents vote absentee ballots to improve accuracy. Jones said that would be a mistake because the review process for such ballots can become a partisan issue. 

“I don’t trust postal absentee voting unless the voter marks his or ballot competently, follows the instructions for the correct form of mark and then gets it into the mail well before the deadline,” he said.

Jones, who feels elections in Iowa are fair and approves of the machinery used in Scott County, never misses voting himself. If he happens to be out of town, Jones said, he casts an absentee ballot.