Procedures for election give reason to be hopeful

By HOWARD TROXLER,  St. Petersburg Times Columnist
Published August 24, 2004

Nancy Bandy of St. Petersburg wasn't involved at all in the 2000 election. Today she's training poll workers in Pinellas County. She'll be a supervisor on Election Day, one week from today, overseeing several precincts.

Here is how she got involved. Her daughter's mother-in-law, who lives in Oregon, was so curious about what happened in the Florida 2000 presidential election that she used eBay to buy one of Palm Beach County's used voting machines for $300.

"She wanted to see it for herself," Bandy says. "She wanted to understand what the controversy was all about.

"I thought, if she can go to all that trouble, why can't I go to the trouble in my own hometown?" So Bandy signed up with the Supervisor of Elections Office. Her previous job had been training new bank employees, so she was a natural for teaching.

Recently I sat through two days of poll worker classes run by Bandy and others to see how things are supposed to work in next Tuesday's primary. Details vary by county, but the general procedures will be the same.

It was a reassuring experience on two major fronts:

(1) There was a big emphasis on not turning voters away, as long as a voter shows up at the correct precinct. In most disputes over eligibility, the voter will be able to cast a provisional ballot.

(2) There are many controls and double-checks concerning the touch screen voting machines. All the hoopla out there makes it sound like it's easy to tamper with the vote totals. But it isn't.

Pinellas County has 377 precincts. The boss of each polling place is called a "clerk." There will be three "inspectors" staffing the voter rolls, a "demonstrator" to show how the machines work, a "machine manager" to oversee the machines, and two "deputies" to greet voters and keep order.

Pinellas will have more than 3,000 poll workers on Election Day, paid between $80 and $100, plus $15 per training session. All of them are expected to follow basic guidelines: No perfume. Respectable dress. Absolutely no political opinions while on the job.

Bandy and another teacher, Lois Crittenden, first instructed workers on how to process the "perfect voter," who shows up at the correct precinct, has a picture and signature ID, and is listed in the register.

Then they went through all the possible problems. A voter has no ID? No problem, the voter just fills out a separate affidavit. Name not in the register? Provisional ballot. And there are various procedures if a voter already has requested an absentee ballot.

Considerable attention was devoted, of course, to the AVC Edge touch screen voting machines. Precinct clerks and machine managers will set them up in the polling place the night before, if practical, or early election day.

Just before 7 a.m., the machines will be turned on and switched open for voting. Each machine will automatically print a report showing zero votes cast so far. Both clerk and machine manager will inspect this tape and sign a statement attesting to it. Any member of the public is welcome in the polling place to observe this process, as well as the reverse process after the polls close.

At 7 p.m., the machines are closed and each machine prints out a closing report. (This report puts the lie to the claim that a hacker might simply jiggle the final election totals in the central computer through some "back door" - there's a paper audit trail with totals for each machine.)

A plastic seal is then broken on each machine's results cartridge, and the cartridge and paper printout from that machine are placed into a results pouch. Each machine, cartridge and tape have matching serial numbers. The results pouch is closed with a plastic seal bearing yet another serial number. That serial number is reconfirmed before the pouch is opened.

Listen:

There are going to be glitches on Election Day. No system involving millions of voters, and thousands of precinct workers and voting machines, is going to go off glitch-free. And there will be critics trying to spin each glitch into a major disaster. But the supervisors, teachers and poll workers I spent two days with will be trying as hard as they can to prevent it. I have considerable faith in them.