Leon County overcomes voting snag  (FL)

Angeline J. Taylor and Bill Cotterell     Tallahassee Democrat   21 October 2008

Finicky machines that wouldn't accept legal-size ballots led representatives at two Leon County polling stations to resort to backup plans to properly record votes, Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said Monday.

Sancho said around noon Monday a problem became evident with the newly purchased OSX ballot counters. The machines have what Sancho called a "sensitivity problem."

"Certain ballots are being rejected across the state," he said. "The machine is too sensitive for differing lengths."

Sancho said if the machine reads the ballot card as too long, it simply will not count the card. This caused representatives at two of the outlying polling sites in Leon County — the northeast public library branch and the Woodville Community Center — to bring in extra equipment to read ballots. Until the extra equipment was in place, poll workers were advised to distribute notices of the glitch to early voters. On that notice, voters were invited back to see staff re-enter their ballots to eliminate any concern. By 3 p.m., however, the library had switched to older optical scanners. Woodville switched out to another OSX machine that worked for them.

"We've had no ballots rejected with this unit," said Kimberley Miller, voting system technician.

Sancho said, "This is not a Leon County problem. This is a state problem."

Secretary of State Kurt Browning disagreed. He said Monday that there were reports of long lines at polling places but early voting got off to a smooth start.

Browning said about 1,000 voters showed up in the first two hours of voting in Pasco County and about 1,500 turned out in Sarasota County in the early morning hours. In Washington County, he said, poll workers expected 200 votes to be cast all day — but they got that many by noon.

"If lines are a sign of a healthy democracy, then certainly our democracy is healthy today," Browning said.

He said there were no mechanical problems that interfered with voting, but that there were some reports of phone lines not working or other communication problems.

He advised voters "to be prepared and to be patient." He also said voters should use absentee ballots if they can't take time off from work to go to courthouses or other early-voting places.

"Florida is now in the midst of a historic election," Browning said.

He said the state has gained more than "1 million voters" since Jan. 1.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, wrote to Gov. Charlie Crist, asking that congressional researchers be allowed to monitor how well elderly voters are able to use polling equipment in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Browning denied the federal staffers access to the polls, citing state laws that limit entry to specified personnel, but he said he would ask his legal staff to take another look.