Less than two years after spending $17 million to replace Broward County's election system, county commissioners expressed growing apprehension Tuesday about electronic voting and decided to rethink what they had done.
Commissioners ordered their staff to explore retrofitting the new touch-screen voting machines to print copies of each ballot or ditching the machinery in favor of paper ballots read by optical scanners. They want the study completed in the next couple of months so they can make any changes before next year's presidential elections.
The ATM-style touch screens replaced the punch-card ballots that were banned in Florida after the 2000 presidential election recount. But critics complain electronic voting could be prone to tampering and also is impossible to recount during a disputed election.
"There is no confidence in the equipment and no confidence that it will work properly," Commissioner John Rodstrom said. "We were rushed into making a decision, and now we need to figure out a better way because there is no way to go back and recount. We need to have integrity in our voting system."
Broward County's actions come on the heels of a similar decision in Miami-Dade County earlier this month. Miami-Dade officials decided against immediately installing printers on their 7,200 voting machines but to undertake a four-month study.
Computerized balloting was touted as the wave of the future but has faced increasing attack from scientists and computer experts.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have warned that the machinery could be rigged to miscount votes. Other scientists have recommended using the technology only if there is a paper trail that could be audited after elections if necessary.
Executives at Election Systems & Software, which manufactured Broward and Miami-Dade's voting machines, welcomed the studies. They told commissioners they were ready to show how their machinery can withstand tampering and does not have the problems cited in the national reports. Yet they added that no system is foolproof.
"It's not just the machine that builds security," said John Groh, senior vice president at ES&S. "It's an entire process. It's who is allowed to stand at the machine. It's how the machines are unloaded and secured at the polling places. It's a whole group of procedures that must be followed to ensure security."
Broward purchased 5,000 machines from ES&S as part of the $17.2 million deal in December 2001.
Commissioners initially wanted to buy a cheaper optical-scan election system in which voters fill in ovals on a ballot next to their favored candidates and then machines read the paper forms to count the votes. But Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant rallied residents behind electronic voting as more efficient and accurate and persuaded the board to reverse course.
Oliphant said she still supports technology and said the commissioners are to blame for any problems because they did not buy the type of touch screens she wanted. "The Broward County commissioners overruled my recommendation and that of experienced supervisors around the country," she said.
Commissioners complain now that they were under pressure in late 2001 to make a quick decision because the state Legislature had banned punch cards and they needed a new system for the 2002 elections.
The touch-screen machinery accounted for part of the problems in the 2002 elections in Broward.
During the September primary, election workers found more than 1,000 votes that had not been reported in initial tallies to the state because machines had not been shut down properly. And then in the November election, officials botched the numbers by not including in the tallies ballots cast by English-speaking early voters.
"Hindsight is 20/20, but I wish we had stayed with optical scan," Commissioner Kristin Jacobs said.
Florida election officials have not certified the use of printers with the touch-screen machinery, so county commissioners plan to lobby the Legislature to allow it. County administrators estimate it would cost $1,000 per machine to retrofit the machines to either provide a receipt to the voter or make a printout that is kept in a sealed container.
But ES&S officials said they are uncertain what the cost would be. Groh said the price would depend on technical requirements.
Commissioner Ilene Lieberman initially proposed investigating whether to retrofit the machines with printers, but other commissioners expanded her plan to investigate any options that would allow paper recounts. They told county staff to include looking at whether they should sell or dispose of the touch screens and buy optical scan equipment.
"We owe voters no less than a full review because the right to vote is our most precious right in the country," Lieberman said.
Political writer Buddy Nevins contributed to this report.
Scott Wyman can be reached at swyman@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4511.
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