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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 16, 2002
So, when Pinellas County officials decided last fall to spend $15-million on sparkling new voting machines, the plan was to renew voters' trust in the integrity of the electoral process and repair Florida's tattered political image.
Nobody said anything about playing in the sand.
But this weekend, that's exactly what the voting machines will be used for.
"Get out your bikini," said Deborah Clark, elections supervisor.
Sorry. The voting machines won't be counting those.
But people who come to see the sand sculptures at a contest on Treasure Island this weekend can vote for their favorite on one of the county's new voting machines. The machines will tally the votes and find the "People's Choice" winner.
County Commissioner Ken Welch agonized over which kind of voting machine to buy. But he said this idea is easy to like.
"Any way you can get folks to see the machines and come up and use them," he said.
The county will have three or four machines, which cost $3,150 apiece, at the American Master Cup Sand Sculpting Competition.
But the machines will be set up away from the water, on a plywood platform and under tents. Clark and Debbie Stambaugh, president and chief executive officer of the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce, promised they would stay safe.
Stambaugh and workers with Hill & Knowlton, the public relations giant conducting the county's voter education project, came up with the sand castle election plan.
"We were going to do a people's choice anyhow, so this was a natural," Stambaugh said.
At most voting demonstrations, the machines give people creative choices to practice on: They can choose between George Washington, Betsy Ross and other luminaries.
The sand castle choices won't be so creative. The final sculptures may be grandiose, but the choices on the ballot will be simple: sand castles 1 through 7. That's because the sculptors often don't know what they'll create until they begin work, Stambaugh said.
"This is artwork, and a lot of them just create it as they go," she said.
But if they run out of ideas, Clark has a sand sculpture plan of her own:
"I thought I'd make a punch card with some hanging chad."