Florida should have ballot printouts

OUR OPINION: PAPER RECORD OF VOTES WILL ENSURE ELECTION INTEGRITY

Those dreaded hanging chads and overvotes will be missing when Florida voters again cast their vote for president and other offices in November, and good riddance. But something will be missing that should have been included in the new electronic voting systems installed throughout Florida: a paper printout of each ballot cast. The advocates for a ballot printout to back up the electronic voting system are increasing, and Gov. Bush, the Legislature and Secretary of State Glenda Hood should heed their concerns.

New technology

It's true that electronic machines make it impossible to overvote to accidentally vote for more than one candidate in a race or to make other errors that require recounts, as happened in the 2000 presidential election debacle. But many voters remain skeptical of the new technology. They have no tangible way of knowing if their vote was recorded even when they do exactly as instructed by the machines. Neither the sophisticated voting hardware nor educated voters are infallible. Machines can malfunction and are subject to tampering; humans err.

Recounts still will be necessary, as proved in one small election in January for a legislative seat in Broward and Palm Beach counties in which 12 votes constituted the margin of victory. That narrow victory automatically triggered a recount. But what gave officials pause were so-called undervotes the 134 electronic ballots cast without a vote for any candidate. We don't know if machines malfunctioned or if voters misunderstood instructions and believed they had voted. A printer showing voters that their choice has been accurately recorded might have prevented the undervotes or at the least explained what happened to 134 votes in a tight race.

Elections officials and the county commissions that they advised believed that the new electronic voting systems would put an end to the necessity of most recounts and canvassing boards' second-guessing voters because of punch-card errors. But now some leaders are having second thoughts, including the Palm Beach County Commission.

Printouts not superfluous

Spurred by a failed lawsuit by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Boca Raton, which claimed that the lack of a printed record of the vote violated the law, the commission agreed to purchase printers. The county will buy them if the state certifies them. Without that, the printers' data won't be accepted as official by the state. Ms. Hood should take the lead and support printout certification.

Ballot printouts aren't superfluous, even in the electronic age. They are a vital partner to new voting technology, for they empower voters by ensuring that their vote will be counted. Paper ballots will shore up the integrity of election results. Florida needs them.