State: Counties batten down for election

Now, thanks to two disastrous elections, a string of new questions will muddle the plot on the evening of Nov. 5: Did the polls open on time? Did everyone get a chance to vote? Did the software on the voting machines work right? Were all the votes even counted?

Not to worry; the old days will be back soon, say embarrassed officials in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, where voting mishaps now have tarnished two statewide elections.

Desperate to return the public's focus to the outcome -- not the mechanics -- of elections, they have fashioned an aggressive answer to the problem-plagued Sept. 10 primary. It's an all-out, crisis-mode response that will use sheriff's deputies, police officers, disaster planners and other full-time county employees to conduct the general election, just 36 days away.

Gone, perhaps forever in South Florida, are the days when elections were manned exclusively by a few dozen staffers in the Supervisor of Elections Office and a civilian army of temporary poll workers, most of them senior citizens.

That system now seems dated in light of Florida's election woes and the sheer size of the sprawling urban monster that is South Florida. If the 2000 presidential election exposed the flaws in Florida's election machinery, this month's chaotic primary revealed how the traditional way of holding elections in Florida is creaking under the weight of its eye-popping growth.

While other government functions have adapted, "the voting system just has not kept up with it," said Roger Desjarlais, the county administrator in Broward.

In the last eight years alone, Broward and Miami-Dade together have registered 608,000 new voters. The influx has created nearly 400 new precincts that must be staffed and equipped.

If the "emergency management" style of running elections works on Nov. 5, it could well be the wave of the future for Florida's larger counties.

"We believe what we're designing right now . . . creates a new model, and there's probably a policy debate that's going to take place around that very issue," Desjarlais said. "Large urban counties with large, complex ballots using new technology versus old mechanical punch card systems: How do we, in fact, ensure a satisfactory process?"

Said Murray Greenberg, an assistant county attorney in Miami-Dade: "We're not just doing this for Nov. 5. . . . If this works well, I think one of the natural reactions will be to think about trying it in future elections."

The county's inspector general, which investigated the primary, said the need to staff elections with full-time county employees has been apparent for a while. The county's auditing department suggested it a year ago, and made the case again after an April election in Opa-locka that created questions about the "competency and preparedness" of Miami-Dade's temporary poll workers.

The Nov. 5 election, the inspector general said, needs to be managed like a "crisis situation," similar to major events like a Super Bowl.

Even in Palm Beach County, which had a smooth election on Sept. 10 with new touch screen machines, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore was taking no chances. At her request, the county agreed to supplement her "volunteer" corps of nominally paid poll workers with as many as 645 full-time county employees who will get overtime pay plus the standard poll worker stipend on Election Day.

In her role as president of the association of election supervisors in Florida, LePore took the added step of telling the state in a letter last week that "it is time" to think of other ways to staff elections.

That time is now in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

On Nov. 5, emergency operation centers will be opened and battle-ready, much as they would be for a hurricane. The language being tossed around suggests a bureaucracy in full swing: Top officials have assigned "project management teams" with "timelines" and "protocols" and "logistical support plans."

"We are putting all the resources we have available on this," Greenberg said. "There is a commitment to get it done -- whatever it takes."

As with the nation's war on terrorism, the urgency is so great that any serious debate about the cost of this latest emergency will be put off until later.

A frustrated South Florida public seems to be telling county officials to go for it.

"Whatever it takes," said Phyllis C. Hope, a Broward School Board candidate. "Whether it is done with the sheriff, the county commissioners or God himself, it is time to stop what's happening here in Broward County because it's absolutely a shame and a disgrace."

At three public hearings in Broward last week, dozens of poll workers came forward with stories that revealed the problems of Sept. 10.

What they described was a poorly managed training system that had too many poll workers getting last-minute exposure to the county's new touch screen voting machines. Much of the testimony focused on a huge training session at the county convention center the Friday before the election.

"There were over a thousand people there -- with too much of a crowd for them to handle," said Bea Rosen, 85, a poll worker of 20 years. "They broke us up into groups of 30 to 50, and we had an hour's training there," she said. "That wasn't sufficient, because there were people there that never had any training at all."

Echoing others, Rosen said her precinct kit lacked several key items, including the step-by-step manual on how to operate the machines. She managed to get the computerized voting machines started from memory, drawing heavily on her experience.

But scores of other poll workers, manning their first election, were not as lucky. More than 300 simply didn't show up for work that day.

So poor was the organization under Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant that some of Broward's touch screen machines, which cost the public $3,300 each, still had not been collected from polling places as of Tuesday -- two weeks after the election.

In Miami-Dade, the inspector general found that a series of large, last-minute tasks doomed the election before it started.

Among them was a problem with computer "flash cards" in each of the county's 7,200 touch screen machines. The cards enable the machines to display the ballot, but the manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, left out some of the language required by state law in the Democratic race for governor.

The elections department under supervisor David C. Leahy told ES&S about the error but failed to follow up. Leahy didn't notice that the ballots were still in error until Sept. 1, and a furious rush to correct 7,200 flash cards consumed the final three days before the election.

Another problem, according to the inspector general's report, was Leahy's decision to make the lead poll worker in each precinct responsible for starting the machines, on top of other duties. That was too much responsibility for one person, the report said.

And there are signs problems persist: About a dozen poll worker trainers in Miami-Dade boycotted the classes they were supposed to teach on Friday, saying they hadn't been given the proper teaching materials.

Despite a can-do attitude in both counties, expectations for Nov. 5 are so low that a simple return to a basic, functioning election system -- a given not too long ago -- would be considered a huge victory.

"We guarantee the polls are going to be open at 7 o'clock, the voting equipment is going to be up and ready to go, and people can start voting at 7 a.m. on Nov. 5," Desjarlais, the Broward administrator, pledged last week as the county began to crank up its Election Day planning.

On the plus side, the problems on Sept. 10 were limited to 134 of the county's 809 precincts.

The day went smoothly at precincts 6P and 8P in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Wilton Manors, where 65-year-old Frank E. Carter, a retired airline executive, was working the polls for the first time.

His training was good and his fellow poll workers performed beautifully, he said. When a minor problem arose with one machine, the troubleshooter from Oliphant's office was prompt and efficient. The experience was wholly at odds with the woes that kept the governor's primary in doubt for a week, Carter said.

"I'm thinking, "What is wrong? I can't understand it.' If they had read the manual just one or two times . . ."

The only hitch came on the Wednesday before the election when Carter, who signed up as a regular poll worker, was asked to supervise his polling place.

All he needed was three more hours of training, the elections office said.

"I told them I'd never done it before and they said, "You don't need to be a brain surgeon.' "

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk