Solutions still missing

By Palm Beach Post Editorial

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

The ghost of elections past haunts Palm Beach County. As the November presidential contest nears, Democrats complain that not enough has been done to chase those ghosts away. Ill-conceived, last-minute suggestions by outsiders, such as state Sen. Ron Klein, cannot rebuild the system in time or recapture lost public confidence. Entrenched insiders, such as Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore, have had years to reinstill public confidence but have failed.

After the fiasco of November 2000, legislators banned punch-card ballots and gave counties the choice between touch-screen machines and optical-scan ballots. While nothing like the mistake-prone punch-cards, touch-screen machines have left a curious trail of undervotes, where people exercise their right to skip a race. Skeptics believe the machine skips it for them. The machine vs. voter-error debate rages. Republicans — who control the Legislature and state elections offices — don't help when they defend touch-screen machines but urge constituents to cast optical-scan absentee ballots.

The answer, though, is not to throw everything into disarray. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, asked the courts to impose a paper trail and got nowhere. His last round, rejected Friday by the 4th District Court of Appeal, means time has run out for this election cycle.
 Now comes Sen. Klein, D-Delray Beach, with a tardy plan to inject optical-scan balloting into every touch-screen polling place. Since state election reform requires every optical-scan precinct to have scanners to catch errors, Palm Beach County would have to add 696 scanners. The cost would be close to $3 million, training would be negligible and mistakes would be certain.

While Sen. Klein offers dubious solutions, Ms. LePore ignores his phone calls and acts as if nothing is wrong. Ms. LePore is right that Sen. Klein doesn't understand the details. Maybe if somebody who did understand them, namely Ms. LePore, had been looking for fixes and other ways to reassure voters earlier, something could have been done.

Ms. LePore's frustration extends to voters, whom she blamed for the mistakes of 2000. In discussing her sample ballots, which are complex because they are not customized for every precinct, she revealed her thinking has not changed. "God forbid we have to read and follow instructions," she said. With the primaries three weeks away and the presidential contest a nine weeks later, it's frustrating that the ghosts of elections past remain to haunt us.