Tuesday's election underscores need for paper trail
Published September 2, 2004

Howard Goodman South Florida Sun Sentinel 

And so the glory continues for the Palm Beach County Elections Office.

A day after Tuesday's primary, someone discovered that optical-screen machines had scanned and recorded 37,839 absentee ballots.

But before that tally, workers had counted only 31,095 absentee ballots.

Oops.

So, officials conducted a recount of the absentees.

This is the office headed by Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, who was upset Tuesday by an unknown quantity named Arthur Anderson.

This is the same Theresa LePore who has opposed calls for a paper trail for electronic voting a position that kills the chance of independently recounting the votes cast at polling places.

Ironic, don't you think?

"For me, it simply underscores the very reason why we need the ability to conduct a manual recount and the very reason we had the result we had yesterday," Congressman Robert Wexler said.

I'd called the Boca Raton Democrat to congratulate him for his victory over LePore.

It was Wexler who made paper-trail elections a crusade, sought out a candidate, and paid some $80,000 for a TV blitz that flayed LePore as a stubborn incompetent.

I asked him what he intended to do first, now that he'd won the office.

"I assume you're being sarcastic," Wexler replied.

Well, yes.

But it's a reasonable question, considering that LePore's actual opponent was so little known that when his treasurer, Ken Rosenblatt, deposited campaign checks at the bank, tellers on three separate days thanked Rosenblatt by saying, "Good luck, Mr. Anderson."

LePore, on the other hand, seemed set as elections-supervisor-for-life, notwithstanding her horrendous performance as Madame Butterfly in the 2000 presidential election.

No one has been a harder worker than LePore. She has been as dedicated and accessible a public official as they come.

But she had become too sure of herself, with a confidence in her own judgment that deserved a lot more self-examination after the 2000 debacle caused by her idiotic ballot design.

Although experts have warned that paperless systems are vulnerable to malfunctions or sophisticated hackers, LePore consistently toed the industry line that touch-screen voting is safe and reliable. She said the paper backups urged by critics are expensive, problem-prone and unneeded.

The trouble is, state law requires that voting in extremely close elections must be recounted by hand.

As all-electronic voting precludes this possibility, some geniuses in the Legislature presented a bill last spring to make recounts illegal in paperless voting. The bill failed. But the state Secretary of State's office then issued a ruling that elections officials don't have to recount touch-screen votes.

An administrative law judge struck down that outrageous rule last week.

Now, LePore has lost her job, a fact confirmed by the recount, which produced I kid you not yet a third number of ballots cast: 31,138.

Anderson has promised to make paper backups a priority.

Which means that despite the efforts of Gov. Jeb Bush, Secretary of State Glenda Hood and compliant supervisors like LePore the pro-paper forces are alive and well.

Most pundits are viewing LePore's apparent defeat as pent-up anger over the 2000 fiasco. But Wexler sees it as "a vote for a paper trail."

What do you expect from a guy who's made the paper trail his signature issue? Wexler sued state and federal officials to force them to adopt voter-verifiable systems. Despite a string of defeats, he says the suits are still alive.

He said he'll soon ask the Florida Supreme Court to order manual-recount capabilities in the November election.

I wish him luck. About half the votes in Florida will be cast on touch-screen machines, systems that won't allow for manual recounts if the results are as close as they were in 2000. Maybe, by now, even LePore thinks that's a bad idea.