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Broward vote tally delays raise fears about Nov. 4 election   (FL)

DAN CHRISTENSEN, AMY SHERMAN AND BREANNE GILPATRICK  Miami Herald  28 August 2008

Worry that South Florida could once again keep the nation waiting to see who captures the Oval Office resurfaced Wednesday when Broward County officials took 21 hours to count all the precincts from Tuesday's woefully light primary.

The delay not only kept three hot-button races in limbo for nearly a day, it instantly rekindled memories of 2000, when hanging chads and ballot problems in Palm Beach County kept the nation on edge in Bush v. Gore.

This November, the heavily Democratic Broward County is expected to turn out in droves for nominee Barack Obama.

''Based on what you're seeing now, it's a good bet it will take even longer to count the ballots in November,'' said County Commissioner John Rodstrom, who didn't find out until late Wednesday afternoon that he had edged Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Carlton Moore by 144 votes.

The county said the new optical scan voting equipment worked fine, blaming the delay on a breakdown in transmitting results to election headquarters.

Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes also blamed confusion on a software problem that caused her office to underreport election results to the public on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

She said her office tallied 98 percent of the vote election night about 771 of 779 precincts but announced results for only 725 precincts.

''What you guys were seeing on the Web was different than what we had in our office here,'' Snipes said. ``I'm pretty annoyed about it.''

She promised, ``Broward will not keep the country waiting in November.''

Elsewhere in Florida, Jennifer Krell Davis, spokeswoman for the Florida Division of Elections, said Hillsborough and Sarasota counties had some trouble transmitting absentee ballot results to the state.

But the problem had been resolved Wednesday, Davis said, and ``we certainly haven't seen any widespread or systematic issues.

''For the sheer number of new machines that were deployed, it was a really good day,'' she said. ``So we're really, really optimistic about November.''

Some voters weren't as confident.

''I'm quite upset about why the results aren't in,'' said Isadore Nachimson, a voter from Century Village in Pembroke Pines. ``These machines were supposed to be so much better. I thought these machines were all checked out and in perfect shape.''

INSTANT FLASHBACKS

Some voters had instant flashbacks to previous Florida election horror stories.

''All I can say is they better start working tomorrow getting things fixed up so it won't take this long,'' Nachimson said. ``It's a shameful situation especially since they spent that much money.''

Broward spent about $8.3 million to replace touch-screen machines with much of the funding from the state yet encountered snags in a primary with just 11 percent turnout.

''Almost every year counties throughout Florida spend millions upon millions of dollars for new electioneering technology that continues not to work,'' said Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo. ``It seems every other state in America can get this right but Florida and it's an embarrassment.''

Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for Snipes, said the overnight delay followed trouble with phone lines at one or two of the dozen regional election offices.

She said most vote data was transmitted and received without a hitch at the county's voting equipment center, 1501 NW 40th Ave. But data gathered from 54 precincts wasn't received and had to be located and resent later from computer drives taken to headquarters.

''There was nothing wrong with the results. All of the votes were here,'' Cooney said. ``The transmission was beautiful, but in some cases an error message appeared.''

Cooney said phone lines had been ''tested, tested again and retested'' without problem and that troubleshooting would continue.

''Could it happen again? Yes,'' she said.

Miami-Dade, with 15 percent turnout, avoided the same level of delay.

Dade also uses an optical-scan system that's a bit more laborious than the touch-screen method. Under the old system, a single cartridge collected the votes from every machine in a polling place, and the data from that cartridge was sent to elections headquarters from one of 20 collection points across the county.

Now, each polling place has a flash drive from each of its two or three scanners, plus a cartridge from the one touch-screen machine kept on hand for people with disabilities. Even though data lines at those 20 collection sites has been doubled, sending the data still takes longer.

Tuesday's Miami-Dade ballot contained 138 elections, and the electronic results from each were compared to paper printouts from individual machines before they were released.

''We're not in a rush to get those numbers out there,'' said Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Lester Sola.

Even so, almost 99 percent of results were reported by 11:30 p.m. and almost 100 percent by 1:30 a.m.

In November, when turnout could easily be four times higher, Sola expects to finish around the same time. Many polling places will likely close later, because they will have lines at 7 p.m., but the simpler ballot will not be party primaries nor as many district elections. That means the auditing will be easier.

`A LITTLE EASIER'

''The volume of voters may increase, but the process of capturing and transmitting and auditing the results is actually a little easier in November,'' Sola said.

With results still trickling in late into the night, some wondered about the implications for November.

''When there are difficulties with the new equipment when the turnout is in the teens, it makes you wonder what's going to happen when we have a 60 or 70 percent turnout in November,'' said Republican lawyer-lobbyist Justin Sayfie. ``It doesn't instill confidence when it takes a long time to get results.''

The slow returns frustrated candidates.

''It's been a long night,'' said Eleanor Sobel, who spent hours waiting to hear that she had held off two other former state representatives to win a state Senate seat. ``I wish they would find a way to count the votes faster. Let's get into the 21st century.''

Broward officials began recounting ballots around 1 p.m. Wednesday, about 12 hours after Broward's Canvassing Board County Court Judges Sharon Zeller and Lee Seidman and County Mayor Lois Wexler had halted the count.

At the time, officials said results at 54 of Broward's 779 precincts had not been tallied. Also uncounted were 2,000 absentee ballots that had been brought to the supervisor of elections' counting office after the polls closed.

''We would not have been able to finish till the wee hours,'' Wexler said. ``The staff there said they were exhausted. They'd been up since 4:30 in the morning.''

The canvassing board opted to recess before all the computer drives were tallied.

The lone system problem they identified involved the handling of ballot stubs by poll workers, who were supposed to remove them before ballots were scanned. ''We had a couple of minor incidents yesterday where machines jammed, that's all. That has to do with training,'' the mayor said.

Though Tuesday's election was 100 percent tabulated, officials Wednesday were still reviewing a small amount of provisional and some absentee ballots. They intend to certify results at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Despite the delay, both Wexler and Cooney said the county's new paper-trail voting system worked well.

It better, politicos say.

''I can only hope that when the turnout is six or seven times what it was, that any kinks that developed in the system are worked out,'' said Mitch Caesar, Broward Democratic Party chairman. ``Nobody wants to relive 2000.''

Miami Herald staff writers Matthew I. Pinzur and Adam H. Beasley contributed to this report.



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