Broward city presses flashing button to vote

SOUTHWEST RANCHES -- In her first experience with Broward County's new touch screen voting machines, Joanne Mitchell wasn't sure Tuesday which button to push to complete her electronic ballot, which replaced the controversial punch card system she'd used before.

"It was a little bit confusing," said Mitchell, who eventually figured out that she needed to press the flashing "vote" button. "I thought when you press the candidate. it goes to vote. I didn't know you had to push another button on the machine."

This horse-filled town conducted the first election using the new system in Broward County, which has the most registered voters in Florida and was on the front lines of the contested 2000 presidential election.

Southwest Ranches has only 4,808 registered voters, but this special election for vice mayor is serving as a dress rehearsal for the Sept. 10 state primaries and the Nov. 5 election, when a large chunk of this county's nearly 1-million registered voters are expected to cast ballots.

"We're going to do a complete evaluation of everything that happened today so we'll be better prepared for the larger elections," said Miriam Oliphant, the county's supervisor of elections.

The iVotronic machines replace the punch card ballots and their infamous hanging chad that caused mass confusion and frustration during the 2000 election. The state has done away with the punch cards, and now every county is using either optical scanners, which employ voter-marked paper ballots that are counted electronically, or the more expensive touch screen system.

Allan Benek of Election Systems & Software said his company has sold similar touch screen machines to 13 Florida counties, including Miami-Dade, Nassau, Collier, Sarasota and Lee. The machines cost about $3,000 each. (Pinellas and Hillsborough counties have bought a different touch screen system from Sequoia Voting Systems of California. Pasco County, like Broward, purchased an ES&S system.)

Broward poll workers, who took courses teaching them about the new machines, offered demonstrations to the voters casually strolling into the town's three precincts.

"It was simple . . . you just press on your candidate, review and vote," said Dennis Hofmann, who was quickly in and out of the booth.

Some voters had more difficulty with the new system. On several occasions, poll workers had to catch people who were about to leave before pressing their machine's flashing "vote" button, which records their electronic ballot in the computer.

If a voter misses the button and leaves before sending the vote, a poll worker and two witnesses will submit it, Oliphant said.

"There are some buttons you have to press on the screen and off the screen. It's a little confusing," voter Steve Breitkreuzi said. "It feels weird to walk away without putting a ballot into a box."

Ivy Simpson, who was in a wheelchair with a broken knee, had a poll worker set the machine in her lap while she voted. The machine is a little bigger than a laptop computer.

One machine in each precinct had instructions recorded in a headset and buttons accompanied by Braille so they can be used by people with vision problems.

Because of the city's demographics, the machines didn't offer instructions in Spanish, but that will be included in the countywide elections, Oliphant said. Creole will be used in Miami-Dade County but not in Broward, which also has a growing Haitian population, because the state didn't mandate it.

The results of the election are tabulated by computer 20 to 30 minutes after the polls close, Benek said.

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