CONSTANCE A. KAPLAN,

Elections department working to ensure accurate vote results

Change is never easy. Any change as big as the one we have made in the way we vote from 1970s-era punch cards to computerized voting machines will always carry certain challenges.

Be assured that the Miami-Dade County Elections Department is working diligently to ensure that your vote will count. We have come a long way from the 2000 presidential election, in which more than 100,000 overvotes were reportedly cast in Florida, to machines that will not allow even one overvote this year. While voters can choose not to vote in a particular race, our touch-screen voting machines clearly alert voters that they are casting an undervote before allowing them to do so.

We have had to work through the issues with which we are now all familiar. Fortunately, while important, they have involved records maintained after an election and not the tabulation process or the integrity of the election itself.

We continue to address those issues, yet I want to remind voters of the biggest issue that is truly a threat to democracy one that has existed since long before electronic voting: voter apathy. The Miami-Dade Elections Department can do a lot, from updating our voting system to testing and retesting new equipment to registering and educating voters. But the one thing that it cannot do is force people to register and, most important, to actually vote. Do your part for our great democracy, and be assured that we will continue to do ours.

supervisor of elections, Miami-Dade County, Miami