Sleeping easier without the election nightmares

Survey says most satisfied with voting experience

By Nancy Cook Lauer

Tallahassee DEMOCRAT   02 December 2004

Florida voters were very satisfied with their experiences at polling places and confident their votes counted this year, according to an independent survey released Tuesday.

The survey - by the Collins Center for Public Policy, University of South Florida professor Susan MacManus and a Republican and Democratic pollster - interviewed 800 voters by telephone Nov. 2 and 3. The survey had a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

The survey found that 85 percent rated as "excellent" or "good" their level of confidence that their votes would count. And 80 percent rated as "excellent" or "good" their level of confidence that the state did everything it could to try to prevent election fraud.

But civil-rights groups and other organizations focusing on voting problems say even one disenfranchised voter is one too many - especially if the majority of those disenfranchised are minorities. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way Foundation still are scrutinizing the election, taking public input and pursuing lawsuits over scattered problems in Florida, as well as what are seen as larger problems in Ohio and other states.

About two-thirds of voters in the Florida survey said their experience at the polls was about the same as in 2000, while 29 percent said it was better and 5 percent said it was worse. Since the disputed 2000 election, the state has spent almost $50 million for new balloting equipment, set new standards for recounts and launched unprecedented campaigns to educate voters and poll workers.

"Our county supervisors were particularly feeling the heat, lawyers running all over the state from out of state and in state, different groups posing nightmarish situations that might happen on Election Day," MacManus said. "The bottom line was Floridians, and particularly election officials, were prepared for the worst, and it simply didn't happen. And that's the good news."

It's not that Election Day 2004 was entirely problem-free.

Election Protection, a group of civil-rights organizations, unions and other, reported more than 100,000 calls to its nationwide hot line, with about 4,500 from Florida. The group's 25,000 volunteer poll monitors and attorneys helped votes to be cast by many Americans who otherwise would have been disenfranchised.

Callers complained about long lines; misleading telephone calls telling people to vote Nov. 3 instead of Nov. 2; confusion over polling places that were moved because of hurricanes; and blue pens that were given out even though the ballot instructions said to use black.

Leon County had a number of glitches with electronic ballot-scanning machines - which Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho promised would have no effect on the vote tabulation. About 20 people were still in line to vote at the University of Miami shortly after midnight because of high turnout and few machines.

When asked for recommendations on further reforms, 52 voters in the survey suggested more machines, 21 wanted more parking, 15 wanted a paper trail on electronic machines, 15 said polling places needed better signs and 11 said proposed constitutional amendments should be worded more clearly.

People For the American Way Foundation, one of the Election Protection members, plans public hearings in Florida and three other states to listen to voting concerns. It has filed lawsuits in Florida over voter-registration and polling-place problems and says it may file other lawsuits over voter intimidation, absentee-ballot problems, the casting and counting of provisional ballots and long lines in minority communities.

"Whenever a single American is denied the right to vote, our democratic principles are betrayed," People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas said in a recent statement. "We should be offended by systems that create or permit voter disenfranchisement, whether or not those lost votes would have changed the outcome of any particular election."