Volusia in fight on touch screens    
By Kevin P. Connolly | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted March 22, 2005

DAYTONA BEACH As a blind voter, Doug Hall has to rely on someone else to mark his ballot on Election Day.

But new laws are forcing local governments to provide the Daytona Beach advocate for the blind and others with disabilities new equipment so they can vote independently.

In Florida, that means the controversial touch-screen voting machines which leave no printed record of your vote could soon be coming to a precinct near you.

Touch screens are the only equipment certified by the state for disabled voting.

Elections chiefs throughout Florida, including most in metro Orlando, will likely soon buy enough touch screens with so-called "audio ballots" for the blind to put at least one machine in each precinct in order to comply with the state and federal accessibility laws.

Volusia County is emerging an early battleground as foes of electronic voting mount a battle to block the proliferation of paperless voting in Florida while raising questions about the potential for hackers or glitches to determine an election's outcome problems that state officials and others say are impossible.

A state consultant on disability issues said he wants to stop the "anti-technology lobby" now, in Volusia, before it gains a foothold and spreads throughout Florida a state in which about half of voters already use touch screens.

"We can't let a lack of understanding of technology and of the law interfere with people's civil rights," said Doug Towne, a Largo-based consultant on disability issues for the state Division of Elections.

But the prospect of having touch-screen voting machines in every county in Florida is scary for Susan Pynchon, executive director of Florida Fair Elections Coalition, an activist group based in DeLand.

Pynchon worries about the potential for vote tampering and the lack of a so-called "voter-verified paper trail." That's a phrase often used to describe a system that produces a "receipt" ped into a clear, locked box. Voters can then look at the receipt to review their choices, and election officials can use it to double-check electronic votes.

None of the touch-screen equipment certified for use in Florida has such a feature a situation that prompted U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, to take action.

The suit he filed in state court to force the state to put printers on touch-screen machines failed last year, but Wexler is pursing an appeal in federal court in a related case, said his spokeswoman, Lale Mamaux.

"The bottom line is that without a voter-verifiable paper trail, there is just no certainty in one's vote," she said.

In Lake County, one of 15 counties in Florida that use touch screens, Elections Supervisor Emogene W. Stegall said the new technology is a significant improvement over her previous optical-scan equipment because "overvotes," or ing more than one candidate in a race, simply aren't possible on touch screens.

The other 52 counties, including most of Central Florida, use scanners that read paper ballots, although a few of those counties have already added some touch screens.

"They are not computers. It's a standalone vote tabulator, and there is no way it can be hacked into," Stegall said. "We feel that it is a very good system."

The machines used in Florida undergo a "rigorous" certification process, and touch screens have worked exactly as they were supposed to since voters began using them in 2002, with no evidence of tampering, said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Elections. Fears about hackers are just a "scare tactic," she said.

In Volusia, foes of paperless voting raised security concerns and other issues when about 40 activists successfully lobbied County Council members earlier this month to delay a request by Volusia County Elections Supervisor Ann McFall to purchase 210 touch-screen machines.

McFall and disability advocates are trying to persuade council members to change their minds, and the election supervisor is scheduled to ask again April 7 to buy the machines.

The push for disability-accessible voting machines is part of the federal Help America Vote Act, which mandates such equipment for elections after Jan. 1, 2006. But Florida self-imposed an earlier date of July 1.

That deadline is tied to the funding approved by state lawmakers to pay for the new equipment. However, the $11.6 million from the state wasn't enough to cover all of the equipment needed, so local governments are being asked to cover the shortfall, about $1.4 million statewide.

"This is a classic example of an underfunded mandate," said Seminole County Elections Supervisor Michael Ertel. He is scheduled to ask Seminole commissioners today to cover their county's shortfall of about $180,000.

In Orange County, Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles has assembled a team to come up with ideas for short- and long-term solutions for the equipment issue and then make a recommendation to county commissioners.

But in Leon County, Supervisor Ion Sancho said, "My voters want a paper trail," and he pledged to wait, even past July 1 if necessary, to buy new equipment because he thinks a different piece of equipment a ballot-marking device called AutoMark will get certified for use in Florida this fall, possibly by September.

The AutoMark, designed to work with existing optical-scan equipment, has a touch screen, audio ballot and other features designed to allow disabled voters to cast choices independently.

But it doesn't record electronic votes as touch screens do. Instead it marks paper ballots. The device is still in the early stages of Florida's certification process, and no one knows when, or if, it will be approved.

Meanwhile, disability advocates say they oppose the AutoMark machines because some people may not have the physical ability to get the ballot in and out of the machine without assistance.

Hall, the blind advocate from Daytona Beach who also sits on an election-advisory committee in Volusia, once backed the AutoMark. But he has since withdrawn his support after realizing that people with certain physical disabilities might not be able to vote independently.

"Frankly, having to depend . . . on somebody else to do basic functions is demeaning," Hall said. "It's not fair to the person who it's done to . . . but it's also not fair to the person who has to provide the assistance."