Lawmakers should reduce the governor's power over elections

By Lance deHaven-Smith   Opinion   Tallahassee Democrat   01 March 2005

Before considering Gov. Jeb Bush's request for more authority over county supervisors of elections, legislators should assess Florida's track record since 2001. That's when responsibility for election policy and administration was effectively transferred to the governor because he would appoint the secretary of state.

The new system has invited lax administration, partisan bias and political mischief because it eliminates important checks and balances in three areas:

? Consider felon disenfranchisement. In both 2000 and 2004, the Florida Division of Elections failed to produce a valid list of registered voters who should be removed from the voter rolls because they are convicted felons and have not had their rights restored.

In 2000, Katherine Harris was blamed for this failure because she was the elected secretary of state, but in 2004 felon disenfranchisement was under the control of the governor's appointee, Glenda Hood.

The governor's involvement made matters worse. As the 2004 election approached, the administration went to court to keep the purge list secret. Only after the administration was forced to release the list did journalists discover that it excluded most Hispanics; included felons who had had their rights restored; and had other serious flaws that made traditionally Democratic constituencies more likely than other voters to be removed from the voter rolls.

The administration eventually admitted that the list was flawed and had to be abandoned, but e-mails within the administration suggest that Bush had been planning to use the list despite its problems until the problems became public.

? A second area where the governor's expanded role has proven to be problematic involves the kinds of voting machines that are now authorized. In 2000, many urban counties in which the state's Democrats are concentrated were using punch-card voting machines. These have higher error rates than the optical-scan systems used in most of the rural and suburban areas where Republicans predominate.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision that ended the election dispute in 2000 emphasized the need for all voters to be treated equally by any system of voting and vote-tabulation.

In 2001, it would have been easy for Florida to have moved to optical-scan voting machines statewide. They have the lowest error rates of all voting systems, and in 2001 almost two-thirds of Florida's counties were already using them.

Also, a bipartisan task force appointed by Bush had specifically recommended that Florida adopt a "uniform and standardized statewide voting system."

However, Florida's Election Reform Act of 2001, which the governor hailed as a model for the nation, failed to level the playing field. Although it outlaws the error-prone punch card machines, it allows counties to choose either optical-scan systems or electronic touch-screen systems.

The mechanical voting infrastructure is still biased against Democrats because many of Florida's urban counties replaced their punch-card machines with touch screens.

In 2004, counties won by the Democratic presidential ticket had 53 percent of the ballots in Florida that could not be counted by vote-tabulating machines. Even though the overall number of uncounted ballots was much smaller in 2004, this was the same degree of bias that existed in the disputed 2000 election, when counties won by Al Gore had also had 53 percent of the uncounted ballots.

? A third area where centralizing power has had unfortunate consequences concerns the election information provided to the Legislature. The 2001 reforms included a requirement for the Division of Elections to prepare a report after each general election on the number of ballots that could not be accurately counted by vote-tabulating machines.

Rather than face up to the partisan bias still present, this year's report makes the tendentious argument that the higher error rates of touch-screen systems are unimportant because the total number of ballots impacted is small.

This argument is belied by the margin in 2000, when the presidential election was decided by a mere 537 votes.

In short, the track record with felon disenfranchisement, voting technology, and election system reporting argues against granting the governor any additional authority over election administration.

Indeed, Florida's experience since 2001 suggests that the governor's role in election policy and administration should be cut back. If any area of government needs checks and balances, it is elections.