Some counties still holding out for paper ballots

Jack Gurney    Pelican Press    21 September 2005

Volusia County on Florida's east coast and Leon County Tallahassee may temporarily violate federal and state deadlines for the purchase of electronic voting machines that meet disabled access guidelines until certified new equipment that provides paper ballots for manual recounts becomes available.

Sarasota County spent $4.7 million to meet its disabled access obligations in 2001 with the purchase of 1,615 Elections Systems and Software iVoltronic touch-screen machines that don't provide paper ballots for manual recounts.

June 23, the Omaha, Neb., company announced it has been cleared by federal elections authorities to sell a new product called the AutoMARK, an electronic voting machine that scans ballots and accommodates all voters, including the disabled and visually impaired.

Unlike the touch-screen iVoltronic machines, which do not provide a paper ballot for manual recounts, the AutoMARK machine optically scans ballots in a way that provides the privacy, accessibility and paper verification many voters' organizations have called for.

While Florida elections officials have not certified the new ES&S AutoMARK machines, counties that held out on new equipment purchases because they want ballot paper trails that can confirm computer results will push to have them cleared.

Discrepancies

Inexplicably, the only state-certified touch-screen machines that currently meet disabled accessible standards are the ES&S iVoltronic machines, which Miami-Dade County has threatened to scrap because of operational problems and the absence of a paper ballot.

Sarasota County has $4.7 million invested in the equipment, while Miami-Dade expended $24.5 million to place them in more than 700 voting precincts. In late May, Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Lester Sola concluded an analysis of the machines with a recommendation they be replaced.

The analysis was conducted after last autumn's Nov. 2 general election revealed the number of voters recorded by election workers didn't match the number of ballots cast at 260 of 749 polling places. In some cases, the discrepancies number in the hundreds.

Human error

Sarasota County Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent attributed the Miami-Dade discrepancies to human error and described the controversy over ES&S iVoltronic machines as symptomatic of a "very political" environment in the South Florida community.

Dent has steadfastly defended the county's decision to buy ES&S iVoltronic touch-screen machines rather than optical-scanning equipment that processes paper ballots. One of her justifications has been they meet the federal and state disabled-accessibility guidelines.

The Volusia County situation heated up when council member Art Giles accused Elections Supervisor Ann McFall of threatening to sue him and go after both his personal finances and "your wife's personal finances" because he voted against touch-screen machines.

In a July 2 Daytona Beach News Journal story, McFall described the altercation as an "unfortunate misunderstanding" and said Giles had "misheard" her in a conversation that took place one day after the county council voted not to buy touch-screen equipment.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood is responsible for the statewide elections process. According to the Miami Herald, she has determined the issue of reconciling signature totals and machine discrepancies at voting precincts is a local matter.

Dent has estimated the Sarasota County ES&S touch-screen equipment has a life cycle that could extend to about 2012.

"Maybe then new technology will convince us to change," she said. "But until then, we can't just go to Office Depot and buy printers that attach to our machines."