E-voting May Face Recall in Florida County

IT snafus lead to look at optical scanning

By Marc L. Songini

April 18, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Ongoing technical glitches are prompting election officials in Florida's Miami-Dade County to consider scrapping a $25 million investment in electronic voting systems.
Infamous for the hanging-chad controversy in the disputed 2000 presidential election, Miami-Dade now uses touch-screen technology from Omaha-based Election Systems & Software Inc. that were installed in 2002 to replace its punch-card machines. But coding errors by county personnel caused the iVotronic systems to undercount votes in five local elections, with a boiling point reached in a countywide March 8 special election.
The latest snafu -- in which a glitch caused hundreds of votes to be uncounted, prompting the subsequent resignation of county elections supervisor Constance Kaplan -- left Miami-Dade officials considering a possible switch to optical scanning equipment.
Officials said the miscount didn't influence the result of last month's election.
However, "if you talk to a number of people, they have lost confidence and are cynical about whether their votes count," said Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez. "That has to be changed. We need to do something where we can restore the confidence of the people in the electoral process. That boils down to the equipment. The equipment is problematic."


Coding errors in iVotronic voting machines like this one led to undercounts in five local elections in Miami-Dade County.

He also emphasized that "people want some sort of backup, a hard copy on paper," which is unavailable with the touch-screen machines.
With backing from Alvarez, County Manager George Burgess on April 4 issued a memorandum instructing newly appointed Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola to undertake a comprehensive review of the county's voting-related processes, including the way it manages system coding and staff training.
Burgess also urged Sola to "assess the desirability and feasibility of replacing the county's touch-screen electronic voting system with an optical scan system."
In adjacent Broward County, which also uses iVotronic machines, optical scanning would have been preferable from the start of electronic voting, said Mayor Kristin Jacobs.
The optical gear might have been considered after the 2000 election debacle, she noted, but the state's 2002 deadline to automate voting systems left county officials scrambling to meet the timetable rather than taking time to carefully evaluate all options.
Budgetary constraints -- the county has already spent $17 million on the new systems -- now prevent it from replacing the new e-voting machines with optical scanners, Jacobs said.
She added that she is now pushing to get the state's approval to use printers with the touch-screen machines.
Sola said Miami-Dade's problems resulted from human errors. The

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