Count every ballot

OUR OPINION: COUNTIES SHOULD SWITCH TO OPTICAL SCAN VOTING

Miami Herald   18 April 2005

Face it, the touch-screen electronic voting machines used by Broward and Miami-Dade counties are more trouble than they're worth, which is a lot. Miami-Dade paid $24.5 million for the iVotronic system. But both counties should face the hard truth and replace the electronic machines with optical scanners. The latter provide what the former cannot: a paper trail, voter-error prevention and more reassurance that all votes will be counted.

While Broward officials appear satisfied with the iVotronics after two relatively glitch-free elections, Miami-Dade officials reeling from mistakes in the March elections are moving nearer to ditching the touch screens. County Manager George Burgess was smart to order a study on switching to optical scanners. It's inevitable that Broward will someday reach the same conclusion because touch screens just don't inspire voters' trust, a priceless commodity.

It will cost Miami-Dade around $8 million to replace the touch screens with optical scanners. It's a shame that more money has to be invested in a different technology, but sometimes you just have to chalk up the damage to experience and move on. The iVotronics system has never been reliable enough whether because of machine malfunction or human error to pass the voters' credibility test.

One of its biggest liabilities is lack of a paper trail of votes cast. When undervotes occur there is no way to determine if the voter opted not to vote on purpose or accidentally failed to push the blinking red light to record the vote or if the machine malfunctioned or a poll worker made a mistake.

Determining the causes of ballots being disqualified because of a flaw like undervoting is important for elections departments in order to educate voters and ensure that every vote is counted. Both counties should make the painful but necessary switch to the more-reliable optical-scan voting machines.