Florida needs to monitor absentee votes more closely, Hood says

By Linda Kleindienst   South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Posted January 14 2005

TALLAHASSEE ? Florida's top election official told legislators on Thursday that the state should develop a tighter tracking system for absentee ballots.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood voiced concern over what happened in Broward County, where nearly 60,000 absentee ballots were lost and county officials had to scramble to mail thousands of new ones before Election Day last November.

Some legislators from other counties said their offices were flooded with hundreds of calls from voters who did not get their absentee ballot in time.

"We need to work with the postal service to make sure we can track them," Hood said after appearing before a joint meeting of the House and Senate elections committees. She didn't provide any specifics.

Despite a basically glitch-free election, legislators are looking into whether they should tweak reforms that were passed in the wake of the 2000 presidential debacle, when Florida kept the nation waiting five weeks to learn who won the presidency. Hood said she is preparing a package of proposed changes in election law that she will present to the Legislature.

Senate Elections Chairman Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, said he doesn't envision any major changes this year.

"It's really working pretty good," he said.

Although there have been suggestions, mostly from Democrats, that the state require electronic voting machines to provide a paper receipt that would assure voters their ballots were counted, Posey said he sees no need.

The state's elections supervisors are asking the Legislature to continue the popular practice of early voting. They'd also like counties to be allowed to move from precinct-based voting to more centrally located voting centers an idea that so far has gained little traction.

"We have some of the largest counties in the country," said Kurt Browning, Pasco County elections supervisor. "In Pasco we have 152 precincts. In South Florida, counties have more than 300. It is getting out of control. With fewer sites, we could have fewer but better trained workers."

Posey and Rep. Ron Reagan, R-Bradenton, chairman of the House Ethics and Elections Committee, said they don't see the Legislature agreeing to that.

Although there appears to be general agreement on the popularity of early voting, at least one South Florida legislator hopes to get her colleagues to consider eliminating it.

"We super-size everything," said Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale. "But super-sizing the election may not be the way to go."

She said a 15-day early voting period benefits wealthy candidates who are able to get out their message to voters several weeks before the election but penalizes grass-roots candidates who save their meager dollars for a last minute blitz to win voter support.

"Conceptually, early voting is awesome. But if you're complaining that money has too much influence on elections, you're going to give it more," she said. "This turns the process over to those who have money."

Bogdanoff said she'd rather push the state in the direction of enhancing the traditional Election Day by making it a state holiday, putting polling places in the schools and getting high school students to help run the elections.

"We're moving ahead with everything that goes against tradition," she said. "Voting is the backbone of what we do and who we are."