How things have changed since 2000

Palm Beach Post Staff Reports
Sunday, August 1, 2004

Touch-screen machines

The notorious chad-producing Votomatic system has been replaced by Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen technology. LePore plans to deploy 4,270 machines about one machine for every 164 registered voters and 1,229 activators, used to boot up the Sequoias. They replace 5,000 of the old machines.

"The new ones are more efficient to use, so we don't need as many," LePore says. "For the average voter it takes a little more than half the time than it did with the Votomatic." About 300 Sequoias will be held in reserve.

Programming of the machines for the Aug. 31 election begins this week and will be concluded by Aug. 16. Delivery to polling places will begin about Aug. 20.

Poll workers

In 2000, there were 3,990 poll workers manning the precincts. This year, 5,000 will work the primary and 5,600 the general election.

In 2000, the average poll worker was 76, and 4 percent were 90 or older. There were complaints that elderly poll workers were poorly trained, became flustered and confused, and failed to deal smoothly with problems. This year, the poll workers will be younger. Slightly. Average age: 72. That figure does not include 600-700 county employees who will work the precincts, largely handling communications.

"We already have enough poll workers for August, and we think we'll have enough for November if we can get a number of the people who have signed up to travel short distances out of their own precincts," LePore says.

Since the 2000 election, Palm Beach County has found itself affected by a Voting Rights Act provision that requires a Spanish-speaking poll worker in each precinct, but LePore is having trouble finding enough people.

"We have a lot of people who want to do it, but Florida law stipulates that all poll workers must speak, read and write English, and many of the folks who want to do it don't write English."

"If we don't get enough, we'll pick the precincts where there are the most Hispanic voters," she said.

In 2000, poll workers received 1 to 3 hours of training, depending on their duties. Now, by law, they must attend 4 to 7 hours.

Also new this year, poll workers must be trained before the Aug. 31 primary and again before Nov. 2. Only one session was required in 2000. Training begins this week.

It's not the easiest job to recruit for. Hours are long, pay is poor, pressure as workers learned in 2000 can be excruciating. In 2000, they made $90 to $125 for the entire shift 6 a.m. to about 7:30 p.m. This year, they will make $115 to $170.

Election office manpower

Full-time staff is now 35, up from about 27 in 2000. Another 100 temporary employees will be hired up to November, and on the night of the general election, another 200 people will be employed. Both those totals are up by about 30 percent.

Communications

In 2000, poor communications between the elections office and some precincts created numerous problems. There weren't enough phones. Lines were overloaded. Workers and officials complained about not being able to reach headquarters when emergencies developed or when questions arose about someone's registration or a plea for a provisional ballot.

Since then, LePore's office has purchased 700 Gateway laptop computers for $1,300 each, one for each precinct. A designated precinct worker will be able to access voter rolls for the precinct and the county with that laptop.

Cingular Wireless gave LePore's department 700 cellphones, although the department must buy the minutes. The extra phones will make it easier for precincts to contact supervisors at headquarters.

On election days, two phone banks will operate at headquarters, one to take calls from poll workers and one from the public. That is also new since 2000.

But "we get fewer calls than we used to because we have those laptops in the precincts," LePore says.

Early voting

For the Aug. 31 primary, about six early voting sites will open 15 days before the election. The sites haven't been finalized, but libraries are the most likely. Locations must be open eight hours a day, including weekends.

Ballot design

LePore, pilloried in 2000 for designing the "butterfly ballot," says that just couldn't happen today. The 2001 election reform bill passed by the legislature stipulates ballot design and makes confusing ballots much less likely, if not impossible.

She says the touch-screen system is more "flexible" and makes it easier to keep all the names on one page.

Ballots will be made public by the middle of this week, and sample ballots will go out to the public about seven to 10 days before each election.

Absentee ballots

In 2000, there were 54,570 requests for absentee ballots for the general election, and 47,122 were returned. That was a pittance compared with this year, thanks in part to doubts about electronic voting and repeated pleas from political parties and others for people to vote absentee to be sure one's vote counts.

"This year, we're expecting 125,000 will be requested," LePore says. If the same percentage are returned, the number will top 100,000. She has acquired two more scanners to read the flood of absentee ballots, giving her a total of four. Fortunately for the elections office, county workers can start counting absentee ballots four days before the election, giving them a head start on the pile of paper mail-in ballots.

Provisional ballots

Voters who are registered but whose names for some reason do not appear in the voter rolls will be able to submit provisional ballots, but only at the precinct in which they should be registered. Those votes will be reviewed later and either accepted or rejected.

Felon list

In 2000, the state compiled a list of felons who had completed their prison terms but had never formally applied to have their voting rights restored. They were removed from voter rolls and were to be denied the right to vote if they showed up at the polls. The list, which included a high percentage of black voters along with various errors, was called discriminatory by voting rights activists.

Palm Beach County elections officials "didn't use the felon list in 2000, something I took some heat for then, and it won't be used this year either," LePore says.

The list was compiled by the state again this year but has been scrapped because it again listed many blacks, most of whom are Democrats, and excluded large numbers of Hispanic felons, most of whom were believed to be Republican.

Voter error

In 2000, punch-card machines flooded canvassing boards with undervotes and overvotes. That shouldn't happen ever again.

LePore says overvotes votes for more than one candidate in a single race are impossible because the touch-screen machines will not accept them. In the case of undervotes no choice made in a race the machine asks the voter to confirm his decision not to vote on that question before finalizing the ballot.

Collecting, counting votes

The Sequoia system stores votes in three separate "buckets" inside the machine. Two use "flash memory" cartridges, and the third provides two copies of a printout that will give cumulative totals for each race.

After the polls close, one flash memory cartridge and the printout cartridge are removed from each machine and taken to headquarters for tabulation. One copy of the printout is posted on the door of the polling place. The second flash memory cartridge stays in the machine.

Power failures

"The equipment operates off a battery, but we plug the machine into the wall to constantly recharge the battery," LePore says. "If the power goes out, we have a two- to four-hour time frame before the in-the-machine battery dies. But we also have auxiliary power units. Two machines can be plugged into each unit, and they have an eight- to twelve-hour life-span."

Machine failure

"If the machine stops working, if the screen goes blank, the information already in the machine is still preserved inside on a system called flash memory," LePore says. The flash memory cartridge stores images of voter choices in much the same way a digital camera does.

"The machine could totally bomb out and we could be able to pull out the cartridge and preserve the information," she says. "Votes can't be lost that way."

Hackers

The Internet is full of conspiracy theorists warning that skilled computer hackers could access and change election results.

"I don't think that's possible," LePore says. "Our voting machines are not equipped with modems you can use to make contact with them. You cannot hook up a keyboard to our voting unit and alter information inside it that way either. They are dumb terminals. Also, internal security is built into the software. Whoever might try to hack in would have to know the serial number, ballot style and specific information for every single machine."

As for hackers affecting the tabulation process: "It's virtually impossible. We don't modem results in here to our headquarters or to the tabulation process. We have a stand-alone system here not hooked up even to the county system."

Sequoia employees

News articles about Riverside County, Calif., detailed how technicians at Sequoia, the maker of Palm Beach County's touch-screen machines, made adjustments in the system apparently in order to speed up the tabulation process on a recent election night. Critics wondered whether Sequoia experts were really changing the votes. No malfeasance was proven, but it raised the question of vendor access to the tabulation software.

"One of my big things has always been to be vendor-independent," LePore says. "Some of my staff, myself included, go through extensive training on how take the machine apart and pull it back together and how to be troubleshooters."

She says Sequoia technicians will be available in case anything goes wrong, but they won't have a chance to monkey with results.

"If we need someone from Sequoia, he will be talking to my technician, who will actually be doing the work. In the worst-case scenario, the Sequoia person would do it with my person looking over his shoulder."

What about terrorism?

"We are speaking to our poll workers about the need to keep a lookout for suspicious individuals or incidents, such as briefcases left behind, et cetera and yes, that is subsequent to 9/11," LePore says. "And we do get excellent support from law enforcement."

Headquarters security

"Only four people, including me, are allowed in the tabulation room" before election day, LePore says. On actual election days, there are more, but under supervision.

"The whole building is a secure facility," LePore says. "The only exterior door a person can walk into without a key card is the front door, and that's only during regular working hours. Only four people, including me, have key cards."

Loss of election records

"That won't happen here. We back up everything two different ways, on tape and on CD-ROM."