In this election, nothing will go wrongg

BY CARL HIAASEN

Late-night comedians are already making snarky jokes insinuating that Florida will botch the upcoming presidential election.

Enough already. One little fiasco that changed the course of history and dumped democracy on its ear, and they just can't let it be.

Well, forget what happened back in 2000. This is a new day, a new year and a new era of modernized voting technology. No more butterfly ballots, no more hanging chads, no more frenetic recounts.

As Gov. Jeb Bush declared last week, ``Floridians can be confident our state is fully prepared for the upcoming election season and the ones to come.''

All Americans should share that hearty confidence.

After the 2000 mess, Florida was one of the first states to rush out and purchase touch-screen voting machines. These babies weren't cheap, either, even though we didn't spring for the top-end model that gives each voter a paper receipt.

You might have read recently about a minor problem with the new machines being used in 11 counties. Not to worry the bugs are being worked out.

Here's what happened. During two municipal elections in Miami-Dade, the touch-screen devices failed to provide a full electronic log of ballot activity. Simply put, the machines were unable to recreate a complete record of who voted and how they voted.

Admittedly, without such a log it would be difficult to do an accurate recount, in the event of a close election. Nor do we dispute that tests conducted on the new machines found that, on other occasions, votes simply vanished when the totals were transferred for tabulation.

The manufacturer of the machines, Electronic Systems & Software, says that it has invented a software ''patch'' that will fix the glitch, although the state has yet to install it.

In the meantime, ES&S suggests that election workers download vote totals from each touch-screen unit onto laptop computers. This will take at least five minutes per machine, and there are 7,200 machines in Miami-Dade alone.

That means a full statewide recount might not be finished until, oh, the winter of 2007. But don't worry should you die of old age while waiting for the recount, your vote will stand. Unless, perhaps, you're one of the convicted felons whose name may be summarily erased from the voter rolls.

`No voter left behind'

Last month, the state ordered local elections officials to begin purging 47,000 voters as possible felons who had served their sentences but hadn't yet gotten their civil rights reinstated.

Because many of the applicants were African Americans, who tend to be Democrats, critics accused Gov. Bush of trying to disenfranchise those who might vote against his brother in the November presidential election.

Bush responded by speeding up clemency requests, and recently he announced that voting rights have been restored for 20,861 Floridians with past felony convictions.

Approximately 50,000 others with more-serious criminal records must appear personally before the governor and the cabinet. However, there's absolutely no truth to the rumor that those wearing Bush-Cheney sweatshirts will be moved to the top of the list.

Here in Florida, our new motto is: No voter left behind.

To that end, the governor has signed a law abolishing the requirement that all absentee ballots must be witnessed by a third party.

You might recall that contested absentee ballots played a large role in George W. Bush's puny 537-vote margin of victory four years ago here in the Sunshine State.

Among our 67 counties seemed to exist oddly differing standards for ballots sent in by absentee voters. What was accepted and counted in one jurisdiction was sometimes rejected and discarded in another.

But by eliminating the witness requirement, our Legislature has generously made it possible for practically anyone living or dead, real or imaginary to cast an absentee vote in Florida.

No more costly investigations of ballot brokers who prey on senior citizens and immigrants. No more embarrassing revelations of deceased citizens rising up to vote.

From now on, the legitimacy of each absentee vote can be determined only by visually comparing the signature on the ballot with that on the registration roll.

More than 416,000 Floridians voted absentee in 2000, and the number will be higher this fall. Obviously, there aren't enough election workers to check the authenticity of every signature, which is the whole point.

The second best thing to a free election is a scandal-free election, and ballots that can't be investigated can't very well blow up into a scandal. So let the comics make their snide little jokes.

Touch-free voting machines that leave no paper trail, absentee ballots that need no witnesses who says Florida's political leaders didn't learn anything from the debacle of 2000?

Just wait and see.