Groups offer to lawsuits in exchange for paper ballots

BY GARY FINEOUT   Miami Herald   13 October 2004

TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler and a coalition of unions and civil rights groups offered Tuesday to their ongoing lawsuits against the state if Florida would give all voters the choice of using a paper ballot on Nov. 2.

Attorneys representing the Palm Beach County Democrat and the groups made the offer to top state election officials during an hour-and-a-half meeting, where they presented a lengthy proposal that would also require a federal court to appoint special masters to oversee voting in the 15 counties that use touch-screen voting machines. Those counties include Broward and Miami-Dade.

Rick Perez, the general counsel for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, had no immediate reaction to the proposal but told the groups assembled that he had ''found a lot of common ground'' in some of the ideas they offered.

But Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Hood, suggested that parts of the proposal went beyond what the department had the authority to do. She said the department is primarily interested in coming up with a way to perform a manual recount in case there is a close election in the counties that use touch-screen machines.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, conceded that the proposal wasn't perfect but said he was looking for a way to restore voter confidence in the upcoming elections.

''We're all boxed in,'' Simon said. ``We're looking at a range of lousy choices . . . Right now we're looking at the best band-aids.''

The meeting between the state and outside groups marked the latest chapter in the back-and-forth tussle over touch-screen machines.

Fifty-two counties in Florida are using optical-scan machines which require filling out a paper ballot while the rest are using touch-screen machines. Critics of touch-screen technology are alarmed that there may be no way to know if a machine malfunctioned during a close election.

State law requires recounts when elections are decided by a small margin. For months, the state elections division has argued that manual recounts aren't needed because the machines don't allow voters to more than one candidate, or ''overvote,'' and that it is impossible to know why a voter casts a blank ballot, or ``undervotes.''

But the ACLU and other groups successfully challenged the state rule in court, and last month state officials said they would issue an emergency rule that tells counties how to do manual recounts. The state has yet to issue that rule, saying it wanted to hear from the outside groups before making a final decision.

Meanwhile, Wexler led an effort in both federal and state courts this year to require paper receipts, which would give voters a copy of their ballot and create a separate paper trail for the elections office. His lawsuits initially went nowhere, but an appeals court in Atlanta last month ordered a trial that is scheduled to start next week.

On Tuesday, attorneys representing Wexler, the ACLU, People for the American Way Foundation and unions told state officials they would all outstanding lawsuits if the state agreed to their latest proposal, which would place control of Florida's elections in the hands of federal judges.

The proposal would require poll watchers to compare the number of voters who show up at the polls with votes tallied on the machines, require counties to offer voters the option of using a paper ballot, and require a report to federal monitors on how touch-screen machines fared on Election Day. It also asks that all machines offer voters a way to verify their vote on paper by 2006.

When asked whether such compilations of information could be used in a postelection lawsuit, Simon said that ``it's not our intent to build a record for postelection litigation.''

The proposal from the groups contrasts with one drafted by state officials, stating that in close elections counties should print out ballot images of undervotes and compare them to the final number of recorded votes to make sure there are no discrepancies.