Scanner Snafu Prompts Machines Removal   (FL)

Julie Montanaro   WCTV   21 October 2008

It turns out a scanner snafu at a Tallahassee polling place wasn't the only one.

Three brand new optical scanners in Leon County malfunctioned and the election supervisor in Duval County also reported trouble with new voting machines there.

A brand new optical scan machine at the Northeast Branch Library wasn't working Monday. By two in the afternoon, elections workers swapped it out for an older model, but it turns out, optical scanners at two of the three other early voting sites in Leon County didn't work either. Only the scanner at the courthouse worked properly.

"We just got rid of them and went back to what we used in 2006, our standard, precinct-based scanners," said Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho.

Sancho says the new machines, which cost more than six thousand dollars each, were purchased especially for early voting. They have more memory and can handle more ballot styles, he said. So, election workers have swapped each new machine, for two of the old ones.

The elections supervisor in Duval County says 7 out of 15 machines failed to scan there too, but a spokeswoman with the Secretary of State's office now says that was due to a printing error on the ballots, not the machines themselves.

It's not exactly what voters in Florida want to hear on the first day of early voting in the presidential election, but everyone we spoke to considered it a minor glitch that won't threaten the veracity of the vote.

"It's a concern, obviously, but hopefully all the flaws get fixed, that's why we have early voting in Florida, before November 4th," said voter Ed Stierli as he stood in line to cast his ballot at the Leon County Courthouse.

First-time voter Regina Watson said she heard about the scanner issues on the news last night, but believes Sancho when he says they've been fixed.

"I didn't have any concerns that my vote would count because I have a lot of trust in the election process up here," Watson said.

"I hope it counts. It should. They were supposed to have straightened that problem out," said Howard Griffin who was waiting to cast a ballot alongside his wife, Hattie.

"I really wasn't concerned, I knew our supervisor of elections would get it all taken care of and everything would be fine," Niki Joyce said.

Leon County is expecting a record turn out of early voters this election. Sancho says nearly 3-thousand people voted on the first day of early voting in Leon County.