Primary will be moment of truth for vote machines

Attorneys and others will monitor the equipment's performance Tuesday.

BY JEREMY WALLACE  Southwest Florida Herald-Tribune  30 August 2004
Although high-profile battles for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House and several local offices headline Tuesday's election, the real focus of this primary will likely be the touchscreen voting machines.

Critics have been warning for months that the machines can't be trusted to record votes accurately.

Opponents of the machines, which are used in Sarasota, Charlotte and 13 other counties in the state, say they are poised to pounce on even the slightest hiccup in recording votes.

Attorneys, Democratic Party officials and campaign workers are all planning to be out in force at polling locations to watch for even the slightest irregularity.

One national group vows to have on-call attorneys at more than 60 election precincts around the state to monitor the results. In Sarasota, Democrats say they will conduct exit polling counts at precincts, then compare them to official vote tallies to make sure the machines worked.

Tuesday, for many groups, represents that last big test for the controversial machines before they are pressed into action for the presidential election.

"This will be a trial run for the massive election protection effort in Florida and at least 16 other states in November," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way Foundation, which is recruiting attorneys to monitor the precincts.

In Sarasota, Democratic Party Chairman Harold Miller said he is consulting with attorneys about filing a voting rights discrimination case against the supervisor of elections office because the estimated 230,000 registered county voters won't be entitled to a paper recount in Sarasota.

In contrast, Miller said, the 174,000 voters in Manatee County will have recount abilities because they will be using optical scan voting machines, which require voters to pencil in circles on ballots that are later fed through a machine.

Despite the criticism and scrutiny, supervisors of elections in Sarasota and Charlotte counties are standing by the iVotronic voting machines they will use on Tuesday. Both counties say they've put the voting machines through a battery of tests to simulate the election, and neither county lost a single vote.

Since the county went to the iVotronic touchscreen voting machines in March 2002, there have been no problems in any of the more than 20 elections conducted, according to Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent.

Dent didn't return calls on Friday, but in the past she has stood firmly by the machines, which cost the county about $4.7 million.

Critics, primarily groups with Democratic ties, point to problems in Miami-Dade earlier this summer when elections officials there said a computer crash wiped out 2002 primary election results, since restored.

Democrats in Sarasota also raise questions about the March Presidential Primary, in which 189 of the voters who showed up for that election didn't have any vote recorded. It was the only race on the ballot. Democrats say it's illogical to think people took the time to drive to the polls only to cast a blank ballot.

The questions about the new machines center on whether there should be paper receipts with each vote to assure voters their ions are tallied properly. Without a paper receipt, there is no way to perform a manual recount to assure accuracy, they argue.

Doubts about how the machines will perform have candidates in hotly contested races on edge. Christine Jennings, a Sarasota Democrat running for the 13th Congressional District, said she wishes the county had gone with another system that had some paper trail.

"What if it's a really close election?" said Jennings, who is running against Jan Schneider, C.J. Czaia and Floyd Jay Winters for the Democratic nomination.

In the race for sheriff in Sarasota, Republican candidate David Gustafson said he's not concerned about the result even in a close election. He said Dent researched the systems more than anyone, and if she trusts them so does he.

"I have complete faith in them," Gustafson said.

Gustafson is running against incumbent Bill Balkwill, Ray Pilon and John Simpson for the position. All four candidates are Republicans, but all voters will be able to weigh in on the race because it is considered an open primary.

Gustafson said even if there is some risk in the new system, it has to be better than the old system that made "hanging chad" a household phrase.

Four years ago, the outcome of the presidential election remained in doubt for weeks, as poll workers throughout Florida painstakingly hand-counted millions of punch card ballots with the now-famous chads to determine the real winner. The state responded by banning punchcard systems and demanding more accurate tallies in future elections.

Counties were given the choice of turning to touchscreen voting systems or to optical scan equipment.

Fifteen counties have the touchscreen systems. The list includes some of the state's most populated areas, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties.

Much of the controversy over the machines has simply passed Manatee County by because they use optical scan systems to tally votes.

Bob Sweat, the supervisor of elections in Manatee, said his office hasn't been subjected to the same types of protests and complaints that counties with the touchscreens are used.

Not everyone is waiting until election day to vote and test out the new machines. Thanks to new state laws, all voters in all counties in Florida are able to vote early at Supervisor of Elections offices. Already 1,400 voters have voted early in Charlotte, 800 in Manatee and 3,100 in Sarasota.