Officials: Vote machines not to blame for errors [bwahahahahahahaha!]

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By Ken Kaye and Robin Benedick Staff Writers Sun-Sentinel Posted September 12 2002

To a large extent, the disaster that was the South Florida election on Tuesday was the result of operator error, not mechanical malfunction of the new touch-screen voting machines, according to voters, state officials and the machines' manufacturer.

Machines that were properly set up and installed with the correct software worked just fine, said Russ Klenet, spokesman for Election Systems and Software, the Omaha, Neb., firm that makes the iVotronic machine used by Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

Rather, the problems were the result of too few poll workers, many inadequately trained, he said. In addition, some precincts were missing cartridges to activate machines as well as other cartridges needed to document all the votes on a machine.

Even checklists, which tell how to set up and use the machines, were missing from many precincts, Klenet said, so poll workers couldn't operate them.

"The mess was the result of no planning, poor leadership, lack of process ownership ... and passing the buck," said Mike Lindsey, a state observer assigned to the Broward County elections.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

After the state became a national laughingstock during the 2000 presidential elections, Florida election officials spent millions on state-of-the-art voting systems that would return results quickly and easily.

Fifteen counties purchased more than 33,000 touch screen voting machines, with 26 counties opting for upgraded paper-ballot systems. South Florida alone spent $125 million on new machines and other election items.

Some counties, notably Palm Beach County, fared well on Tuesday largely because voters already were accustomed to computerized voting.

Although it was the first countywide trial of touch-screen voting, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore said about 150,000 people had tried the machines in 21 municipal elections before Tuesday's vote.

Palm Beach County uses machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif. LePore said the system was modified over the past several months based on feedback from voters.

LePore also conducted a mock election in July to gauge voters' comfort with the new system.

Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, had a smooth election Tuesday, and officials credited extensive training and advanced planning for the success. The county, with 519,000 registered voters, also uses machines manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems.

Darrell Smith, the county's director of operations and support, said that on Aug. 3 every polling place opened for a demonstration of machines. Visitors cast ballots and workers retrieved results as if it was a real election. Poll workers had a total of 12 hours of training on the machines.

In Broward and Miami-Dade counties, poll workers were trained for three hours.

Broward's Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant didn't want to go with Election Systems and Software when it came time to purchase new equipment. But county commissioners felt her objections were political, not practical, and awarded a $17.2 million contract to the company.

Klenet, a Democratic Party activist from Broward County, blames Oliphant's office for the failure to have enough people trained.

Broward County's only real test of the new equipment came in July, when they were used in the town council election in tiny Southwest Ranches.

"Clearly we knew Monday night we were going to be short people in the precincts," he said. "And it had a devastating effect."

On Tuesday night, Klenet said he asked county elections officials whether any of the machines actually malfunctioned.

"Their response to me was very, very few," he said. "If you actually voted, you would have found it was extraordinarily easy."

Broward elections officials could not be reached for comment.

In Miami-Dade, Supervisor of Elections David Leahy said the county was plagued largely by two unexpected problems. First, his office learned a week and half ago that it would take six minutes to load the ballot software into each of the 6,000 touch-screen machines in the county.

And, he said it took extra time to program the machines because the lengthy ballot came in three languages: English, Spanish and Creole.

Leahy said his office tried to alert all poll workers of the lengthy start-up time, but not everybody received the word. Also, some poll workers mistakenly refused to allow voters to vote until all the machines were activated.

Leahy blamed tabulation delays on a couple dozen cartridges that failed to retrieve the cumulative results in a couple dozen precincts. As a result, he said elections officials had to manually remove the data.

Per its contracts, Election Systems and Software had more than 60 technicians in both Broward and Miami-Dade counties to help resolve problems. But that wasn't enough technical support in light of the overall system problems, manufacturer officials said.

"When you have 15, 30 or 40 precincts not staffed correctly, you're going to have a disaster," Klenet said.

A recent study by the University of California at Berkeley found that the touch-screen systems were considerably more accurate than the punch cards.

How well they perform depends on the size of the county and training provided, said Henry Brady, the political science professor who conducted the study.

"One of the problems you have in Florida is that your elections officials are politically chosen and they aren't chosen on the basis of their competency," he said.

A Sequoia executive cautioned voters not to be too quick to blame election administrators for Election Day snafus.

"Any kind of conversion in jurisdictions as large as Miami-Dade and Broward is difficult, and I would not be quick to criticize the elections administrators," said Kathryn Ferguson, Sequoia's vice president of governmental relations and public affairs. "With all the changes that have come down since Election 2000, they have had to deal with a lot of changes."

Staff Writers Maya Bell, Barbara Powell, Mitch Lipka and David Cazares contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2002

Answers

"With all the changes that have come down since Election 2000, they have had to deal with a lot of changes."

I liked Jay Leno's take.

"Floriduh!"

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2002


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