 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
Back
|
New machines sail through election
By LISA GREENE, Times Staff Writer Clearwater's city election Tuesday had a winner that wasn't a candidate: Pinellas County's new voting machine system. Voters across the city praised the touch screen machines as easy to use, and the system counted results without trouble, providing final results by 9 p.m. "It's hard not to grin," said Deborah Clark, the county elections supervisor, as she looked over the final results. "I think voters will have a lot more confidence in casting their ballots." The biggest election night problem: The office didn't post precinct results on its Web site Tuesday as they were counted, waiting until 9:51 p.m. to post final results. Clark said she didn't know why they weren't posted earlier, but that the office would do so in the future. At precincts across Clearwater, dozens of voters said the 164 machines are a big improvement over the old punch cards. "It was wonderful, really simple, and it kind of brings us into the 21st century," said Peggy Wiley, 65, after she voted at Clearwater's Wood Valley precinct. Only a couple of isolated complaints were reported to city and county elections officials, and throughout the day, most people had to wait only briefly to vote, if they waited at all. Pinellas is one of four Florida counties that bought touch screen machines from Sequoia Voting Systems, a California-based company. Two of the others, Palm Beach and Indian River counties, also had local elections Tuesday. The fourth, Hillsborough County, will use the machines for the first time in Plant City next month.
Tuesday's election will help restore voters' confidence in the democratic process, said County Commissioner Calvin Harris, who lives in Clearwater. "The biggest winners will be the voters themselves," he said. Harris also said Deborah Clark, elections supervisor, deserved credit for helping to educate voters and run the election. "Deborah has been a real trooper," Harris said. "She has worked hard on this, and it will be a victory for her." Clark's office has been shadowed by controversy since the 2000 presidential election recounts forced Pinellas to choose a new election system. While others praised her preparation for the Clearwater election, Clark said Tuesday night that the election wasn't about her. "I'm more concerned about the voters than my career," she said. "That's not what this was about. This is about commissioners selecting the very best machines for our voters." Pinellas had to pick new machines to avoid the invalid ballots of the 2000 election. Tuesday night's race cut the number of overvotes, in which a voter picks more than one candidate. In last year's Clearwater Commission races, there were 131 overvotes. Tuesday, there were 3, all on paper absentee ballots. But the number of undervotes, in which a voter deliberately or accidentally picks no candidate, remained similar. Those ranged from 229 to 383 in each race last year. Tuesday, there were 266 undervotes in one race, 392 in the other. The biggest delay in tallying Tuesday's votes was waiting for precinct workers to drive the electronic cartridges that recorded the votes to the Election Service Center. Once the cartridges arrived, elections workers popped them into cartridge readers. Each reader downloaded the results, then sent them to a computer that counted results. The first polling place's results arrived at 7:25 p.m. and were counted 10 minutes later. Tuesday morning, after Sam Lasley voted in Countryside, he was one of many voters to praise the machines. "It's a piece of cake," Lasley said. "Even Palm Beach County could use it." Palm Beach was home to the infamous "butterfly ballot," blamed for thousands of voter mistakes in the 2000 presidential election. With only two commission seats on the ballot, this election was especially easy. Each voter had to touch the screen four times to vote. One voter said that September's countywide primary election will be a truer test. "The next one will be the challenge, to see if there's a problem then," said Anna Shields. -- Staff writer Christina Headrick contributed to this report.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
Headlines From the Times local news desks Howard Troxler |
