No chads, but plenty of doubts
Published November 7, 2006

Michael Mayo

When Dorothy Cohen voted at the Tamarac Branch Library last week, she said something strange happened. She ed a straight Democratic ticket, but when the review screen appeared on her electronic machine she said it showed all Republicans.

She called over a poll worker. "He said he'd clear the ballot and I should just start over, but I said it should be reported immediately and the machine should be shut down," said Cohen, 82, of Sunrise.

Cohen said on her second attempt, the review screen had her proper picks and she pushed the red "VOTE" button to finalize her ballot.

"I want to trust the system," said Cohen, who'll be a poll worker today. "But you wonder if the machines are rigged."

Welcome to Election Day 2006. Six years after the low-tech debacle of 2000, hanging chad has been replaced by nagging doubt. As electronic machines have taken over, they have triggered suspicion and distrust. Especially with the state not requiring, or even allowing, a voter-verified paper record on certain machines, including the ones used in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said eight machines out of 250 used in early voting had "calibration issues" that led to glitches such as the one encountered by Cohen.

If the same error rate occurs today, when about 6,000 iVotronic machines are used at 776 Election Day precincts in Broward, that means almost 200 machines could be problematic.

Despite assurances by elections officials and machine manufacturers about the security and accuracy of touch-screen systems, voters should be wary. Even if the review screen matches your vote, who knows if it gets recorded that way after it travels through the electronic ether?

Snipes, who inherited the machines made by Election Systems & Software when she replaced Miriam Oliphant in November 2003, sometimes wonders if they're worth the trouble.

"There was this rush to judgment to get new technology after 2000," Snipes said. "Maybe we just needed sharper styluses."

I don't think anybody wants to go back to the old punch-card days, but maybe she has a point.

Instead of making the complicated machines even more complex with the addition of special printers, maybe we should aim lower-tech. Maybe we should follow the lead of Tallahassee's Leon County, where voters have a choice between a touch-screen machine or a paper ballot that gets run through an optical scan system.

In the September primary, more than 97 percent of voters used the older optical scan system, Leon Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said Monday.

"There's so many problems with new technology it gives me a headache," Sancho said.

Sancho called reports of the switched review screens in South Florida "extremely troubling" and urged voters to be vigilant.

Sancho angered state officials earlier this year when he conducted tests on a Diebold Accuvote 2000 machine used in Leon to show how easily votes could be changed internally.

"I don't require citizens to trust the machines. I think we should be required to prove the technology is accurate," Sancho said. He doesn't understand why Gov. Jeb Bush's administration has been so stubborn about a paper trail for recounts on newer machines.

Snipes and Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Lester Sola also would like to see a paper trail, but they hope voters aren't scared off by conspiratorial talk.

"What I always say is in a laboratory you can pretty much do anything, but there hasn't been one election that's proven to be fraudulent with these machines," Sola said Monday.

Sola said there was only one machine problem during early voting in Miami-Dade, attributed to a woman whose long nails caused her votes to get switched.

Snipes and Sola say their biggest concern today is the human element. In the September primary, two Broward precincts opened late. Miami-Dade precincts were scheduled to have all their machines activated on Monday night, patrolled by police and secured by tape to prevent tampering. Snipes said overnight machine setup wasn't necessary. Any more late openings, she might want to reconsider that.