Voting-gear check rejected

The governor and the secretary of state accused a coalition of election watchdogs of trying to undermine the election by seeking a statewide review of voting equipment.

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS

meklas@herald.com

 

TALLAHASSEE - The state's top election officials dismissed a request Tuesday from an election watchdog group to conduct an independent review of the state's touch-screen voting systems.

The Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition urged the governor to conduct audits of the electronic touch-screen voting machines used in 15 Florida counties, and do random audits of the optical scan machines used in the other 52 counties, to determine if they are working correctly during the Aug. 31 primary.

An independent audit of voting equipment has not been conducted in Florida, and state officials rely on the work of supervisors of elections in each county to check the accuracy of their machines.

Spokesmen for Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood did not respond to the request, instead accusing the coalition of trying to erode confidence in the state's elections systems.

'We are not going to engage in every accusation du jour from people whose goal it is to undermine voters' confidence,'' said Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Bush. ``The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections.''

`MOST SECURE'

Nicole deLara, a spokeswoman for Hood, argued that Florida has ''the most rigorous certification process in the country and uses the most secure and accurate technology available today'' and ``has conducted hundreds of successful elections using touch-screen equipment since 2002.''

''When organizations set out to erode voter confidence, they do a disservice to the constituents of Florida who should feel nothing but confident that their votes will be counted,'' she said.

The coalition was joined at a Tallahassee press conference Tuesday by the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade County, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees.

The coalition uncovered documents this spring from Miami-Dade elections officials that show that internal tests found computer flaws in the iVotronic voting machines used in Miami-Dade, Broward and nine other counties when doing post-election audits.

''The real questions today is does our system work, and we don't have a real answer to that,'' said coalition member Dan McCrea.

`AUDITING DEFECTS'

Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, emphasized that the group ``was not here to launch a full-blown attack on [touch-screen voting] systems in Florida. What we are saying is . . . the auditing defects slipped through the state verification system.''

Sandy Wayland, spokeswoman for the coalition, said an audit would ensure voter confidence by determining whether the machines record the touch-screen vote and tabulate it accurately. He also called for the machines to provide paper result reports.

MARYLAND REVIEW

At least one other state has conducted a statewide review of its touch-screen voting equipment in light of recent problems. Last year, the Maryland legislature authorized a report by independent auditors. In January, the report concluded that the Diebold electronic voting machines the state uses had security flaws that could allow hackers to corrupt the system.

But the authors of the report emphasized that the machines, if operating correctly, count votes accurately.

Florida election officials likewise argue that the computer flaws in the iVotronic machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software can be fixed and do not affect the ability of the machines to accurately record votes.