Hood supports more early-voting sites

 By David Damron | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted December 2, 2004

Florida elections chief Glenda Hood told county election supervisors Wednesday that she backs more early-voting sites and tighter tracking of absentee-ballot requests.

Hood said it's up to others to push for audit paper trails for electronic vote machines. Hood also said she needs more time to look at supervisors' new proposal to scrap the current precinct polling system built mainly around Election Day, and switch to extended days of voting at a smaller number of larger "voting centers."

Hood lauded the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections at their winter meeting in Orlando, speaking after Orange County elections chief Bill Cowles introduced her as one reason "Florida got it right" Nov. 2.

The former Orlando mayor returned the praise. "Each one of you helped make sure that we shed the ghosts of 2000 past," Hood said before backing many of the initiatives on supervisors' legislative wish list:

Tighter U.S. Postal Service tracking of absentee-ballot requests. Broward County raced to replace thousands of lost requests before Election Day.

More restrictions on partisan poll workers, perhaps keeping them farther from voters.

Tighter deadlines and rules for groups that solicit voter registrations. Fraud allegations and groups turning in forms late caused voter confusion.

Hood wants more time to study a switchover to a longer voting period at mega-voting centers, or "Wal-Mart voting," as Colorado's Larimer County clerk Scott Doyle described his positive 2004 switchover to the system Wednesday.

Hood "said just what we wanted to hear," said Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who backs the super-voting center concept. "She's open to discussion."

Hood also pointed to a Collins Center for Public Policy survey released Wednesday that showed 85 percent of state voters had an excellent or good level of confidence that their vote counted. Twenty-nine percent of the 800 phone-surveyed voters also said the vote process was better than in 2002. Only 5 percent said it was worse, and 64 percent said it was the same.

"I expected it to be worse," said political expert Susan MacManus, an author of the survey. "But Floridians were pretty happy with the system."

MacManus said voters were mainly upset by long lines, but a number recommended adding paper trails to electronic machines. Voting-rights advocates fear electronic machines can malfunction or get hacked, and that they erode confidence in elections.