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Voters try out new machines
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Eighty-year-old Frances Crawford has voted in every election in her adult life. That's 59 years of mostly lowering levers and punching paper ballots -- methods she said she's never had problems with. But after last year's presidential debacle involving dimpled, hanging and pregnant chad, the Tampa woman said she's ready for change. Crawford was among throngs of poll workers and mall visitors to take a crack at the county's new touch screen voting machines Wednesday during an event kicking off a yearlong campaign to introduce the new technology to the county's 510,000 registered voters. The Supervisor of Elections Office unveiled 15 machines at the center court in University Mall for the "Every Vote Touches Your Future" rally, which included free food, speeches, music and patriotic balloons. Crawford praised the machines as easy to use and quick to process. "We should have had this a long time ago," said Crawford, a poll worker for Precinct 135 near Dale Mabry Highway and Azeele Street. "It's terrific." Election workers were stationed at each machine to patiently guide people from start to finish. Earnest Williams, an elections service center manager, cheerfully greeted voters and urged everyone walking by to give the system a try. They were handed plastic cards to insert into a machine, about the size of a laptop computer, for activation. The machine is supposed to pull up the ballot that has been preprogrammed to correspond with the precinct. Testers were then sent to one of the booths, which looked like compact automatic teller machines, but with panels on three sides to ensure privacy. Barbara Smith, who will be charged with training workers at her precinct in the River Grove area of West Tampa, slid her card into a slot in the machine and was instantly surprised. It asked her to choose English or Spanish. Williams, the elections employee, said the machine can be programmed to any language, and the elections office is in the process of identifying which languages should be programmed where. Smith tapped "English" with the tip of her nail on her right index finger, but nothing happened. "Just firmly touch it with your finger," the helper told Smith. The 66-year-old woman whizzed through the ballot, purposely leaving a few races blank. When she hit the "review" button, the screen pulled up the races that she had neglected to cast votes on. When done, Smith looked around and smiled. "I need to go through it a little bit more," she said. "But I like what I see." Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio said one the neatest things about the new system is that each machine will have audio attachments so that visually impaired voters will be able to cast their ballots without assistance. "For the first time ever, they can vote in total secrecy," she said. The $12-million system will be put to the test April 2 during the Plant City municipal elections. It will also be used for the Sept. 10 primaries and the Nov. 5 general election.
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