State: Dropping one word fixes ballot

TALLAHASSEE -- A lawsuit filed Monday by the Democratic Party was dismissed Tuesday after the Democrats and state election officials agreed on a plan to repair ballot language both sides said was misleading.

The ballots will be changed, explanation letters will accompany absentee ballots, and fliers will be distributed to voters at the polls during the Sept. 10 primary.

Word of a settlement came from newly named Secretary of State Jim Smith as he sat down for a midday talk with the man who appointed him to the post, Gov. Jeb Bush. They promised to do everything possible to ensure that Florida has a model election.

Bush noted that Smith headed a task force he appointed last year to investigate problems in the 2000 presidential election. Virtually all of the changes Smith's committee proposed were adopted by the Legislature a year ago.

"We have the model election law in the country," Bush said. "No more excruciatingly painful canvassing boards trying to figure out if this chad is dimpled or pregnant because we don't have chads any more."

Punch card ballots are gone, replaced by new machines that are supposed to make every vote count. Seventeen of the state's 67 counties will use touch screen equipment, and the rest will use optical scan systems that reject improper ballots.

"I know there is a very small fraction of the hardest core of the hardest core of the Democratic Party that is still yearning for the good ol' days of 2000 to get people's blood boiling, but the fact is the state has responded," Bush said. "We've put up the money, the supervisors are implementing the plan, and we have a good secretary of state that will make sure these elections will be run and operated fairly."

The ballot question was resolved by Smith within hours of his taking office Monday. As his first act, he met with Democratic Party head Bob Poe and offered to have an explanatory letter sent with overseas ballots that had to be mailed today. A followup letter will be sent to voters whose absentee ballots already were mailed.

The ballot for the Sept. 10 Democratic primary was going to instruct voters to "vote for one pair," meaning governor and lieutenant governor. But none of the Democrats have chosen running mates yet, so beneath each candidate was the phrase, "not yet designated."

Democrats feared the language could mislead voters into voting for two gubernatorial candidates, nullifying their vote.

That problem was solved by eliminating a single word. Lawyers for Smith and the Democrats agreed to change the phrase to "Vote for One."

Some elections officials will reprint the ballots while others will simply cross out the offending word. In cases where the ballots have yet to be printed, the language will be changed as a result of an emergency rule Smith proposed. Touch screen machines can be easily reprogrammed to eliminate the word.

Democrats hailed the decision as a significant step toward a smooth election. They attributed it to the departure of Katherine Harris, who resigned as secretary of state last week after discovering she failed to comply with an election law requiring her to file a letter of resignation when she qualified to run for Congress.

"The long nightmare of obstruction from the secretary of state's office seems to be over," Poe said after the lawsuit was dismissed. "It is refreshing to have a secretary of state who is willing to sit down with us to work through any problems we have during this election season."

Smith said a second lawsuit filed against him Monday by 15 supervisors of elections will not be so easy to resolve. The supervisors are concerned that the ballot initiative approved by legislators is so long it will deter voters from finishing the ballot.

"The Legislature changed the law to give them more expansive length," Smith said. "Whether supervisors like it or not, they're going to have to live with it."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk