Number of 'lost votes' in Georgia reduced

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/18/04

Georgia's number of "lost" votes ped dramatically in the Nov. 2 presidential election compared with 2000, the secretary of state's office reported Thursday.

So-called lost votes occur when a voter's choice on a ballot cannot be determined, or the voter chooses to skip a race.
In the 2000 presidential election, Georgia had more than 116,000 lost votes, about 3.5 percent of the ballots cast, the second-worst rate in the nation. This year, only 12,843 lost votes were recorded. Many of the lost votes in 2000 occurred with voters using punch cards, similar to those used in South Florida, where elections officials could not determine a voter's intent due to hanging, dimpled or pregnant "chads."

Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox credits the state's switch to electronic voting ? which she engineered ? for the dramatic reduction in lost votes.

Cox in 2002 pushed to get rid of the state's 159-county patchwork voting system of punch cards, optical scan and lever machines and replaced them with more than 24,000 electronic touch screen machines. The machines have been passionately criticized by some political activists and computer security experts who say they are vulnerable to electronic manipulation by anyone interested in fraudulently changing the outcome of an election. Cox has vehemently fought the charge, and there is no evidence an election has been manipulated.

A CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project study released last month indicated that electronic voting machines do a better job of recording votes than older technologies. The study did not address the security of the machines and assumed that the votes were legitimately cast.

"Modernizing our voting system resulted in 103,000 more Georgians having their presidential choice counted this year," Cox said.