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Voting boss confident as machine debut nears
By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer Six days before the debut of the first new voting machines in Pinellas County in a quarter-century, elections supervisor Deborah Clark said she's ready for Clearwater's municipal election. "I am not concerned about system failures," she told members of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club on Wednesday. "My main concern is that voters know how to use the machines." Clark said she thinks the election will go well. "We're looking forward to Tuesday," she said. "We've had such a positive reaction (to the machines), I think it'll be a really positive experience." A successful election is critical to restoring faith in the democratic process after the 2000 presidential election recounts, Clark said. "We have an opportunity," she said. "We also have a tremendous responsibility to restore credibility . . . so that our voters are confident when they go to the polls." Clark has faced controversy over the past two years, from mistakes counting votes in the presidential election to questions about her husband's involvement with a company that sought, but did not win, the county's voting machine contract. But on Wednesday, Clarke, a Tiger Bay board member, was relaxed as she spoke before a friendly audience. She joked about not calling on certain audience members for questions, and she preempted possible questions by addressing some of the most common concerns up front: The machines can't be hacked into because they're not hooked to the Internet, she said. An audit trail of votes can be printed from each machine. And tampering with the results would take "such widespread collusion" that "it's just not going to happen." Clark said voter education is her top priority this year. So far, her office has demonstrated the machines at about 150 sites, 94 of them in Clearwater, she said. Paying for the $14-million machines continues to be an issue. Clark said she's afraid the county may not get the other half of the nearly $1.3-million that state lawmakers promised to give Pinellas to help cover the machines' cost. Pinellas got $635,000 this year, but the House budget contains only $2.5-million, instead of a planned $12-million, to fund voting programs around the state. Clark spoke the day after elections were held in several county municipalities -- among the last in which voters will use punch cards. The biggest problem Tuesday night was a delay in the posting of election results on the Internet. Members of her staff tried to post the results late Tuesday, Clark said, and discovered that the county's technical department had changed a password without telling her office. An elections staffer had to drive the results to the Clearwater County Courthouse as a result. South Pasadena's results were notable for the large number of undervotes, or ballots that were cast without a vote. Out of 1,922 possible votes in a City Commission race, only 1,510 were cast. But voters had the option to vote for two out of three candidates, and Clark said the results were typical for that type of race. In such cases, voters often "bullet vote" for only one candidate on purpose, she said.
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From the Times North Pinellas desks |
