Florida Shifting to Voting System With Paper Trail
By ABBY GOODNOUGH and CHRISTOPHER DREW
New York Times
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 — Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.
Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.
Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, are moving toward exchanging touch-screen machines for ones that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in the recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly.
“Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it’s the Bermuda Triangle of elections,” said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. “For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant.”
(Continued here.)
New York Times
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 — Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.
Voting experts said Florida’s move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation’s biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.
Several counties around the country, including Cuyahoga in Ohio and Sarasota in Florida, are moving toward exchanging touch-screen machines for ones that provide a paper trail. But Florida could become the first state that invested heavily in the recent rush to touch screens to reject them so sweepingly.
“Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it’s the Bermuda Triangle of elections,” said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. “For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant.”
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
1 Comments:
Jeez, I wonder what the reaction in FL-13 from Congressman-Select Buchanan is ? I suspect that Congresswoman-Elect Jennings feels that this is proof that the voters were deprived of their full participation in the process.
Not only do they need a system that has a paper trail, but also enough equipment and qualified personnel to handle the voters in a timely manner. In January, two Cuyahoga County election workers were convicted for illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.
http://www.cleveland.com/ap/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-29/1169672401303240.xml&storylist=topstories
In 2004, the lines were so long that one has to wonder how many people decided not to vote. My sister lives in Lake County which is adjacent to Cuyahoga County. Her polling station was the local elementary school. The school was on the border between two precincts, so it handled voters for both. My sister waited in the cold and drizzle for over an hour to vote …. the whole time watching people drive in and drive out as they were quickly processed in the other precinct … her precinct had fewer machines than the other so they had to wait. In 2006, she voted absentee. In order to make sure that your ballot is actually counted when using an absentee ballot, you must ask the election officials for a copy of your voter activity.
Post a Comment
<< Home