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An election night survey finds many of those who voted satisfied with their experience at the polling place.
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 14, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- The term "Florida election" need no longer cause chuckling -- or cringing, a survey released Wednesday shows.
The survey found Florida voters were generally satisfied with their most recent experience at the polling place.
More than 90 percent of voters felt that poll workers did an excellent or good job on Nov. 5. More than 85 percent rated the ease of use of the voting technology as excellent or good. And more than 88 percent were satisfied that their vote counted.
The telephone survey, conducted Election Day after 4 p.m., also showed 95 percent of voters thought the election process was better or the same, not worse, than in 2000, when many were foiled by confusing ballots and difficult punch card machines.
The survey by the Collins Center for Public Policy and the James Madison Institute, two Florida think tanks, also showed that fear of new technology didn't keep older voters from the polls.
Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political science professor who helped design the study, said the results showed Florida voters are confident the state's election problems are over.
"We had problems; we've addressed them," MacManus said. "It's not perfect, but our voters give us high marks."
The survey included interviews with 801 Florida voters, and 666 people who didn't vote. The margin of error for voters was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Of the voters surveyed, about 42 percent were Republicans and 39 percent Democrats. About half were voting on a new type of system. About 86 percent of them had voted in 2000.
Fifty-five percent of the respondents said their experience was about the same as it was in 2000, and 40 percent said it was better. Many who said it was the same were people who used the same type of voting technology two years ago.
After 2000, Florida revamped its election system, eliminating punch card ballots. When that year's presidential election ended too close to call, recounts showed many voters had difficulty with the system, not punching hard enough, creating the now-infamous hanging, dimpled and pregnant chad.
Most counties that had used optical scan systems -- in which the voter blackens an oval on a paper ballot that's read by computer -- kept them. Other counties went to touch screen voting, where voters touch candidates' names on computer screens.
Some officials worried that the unfamiliar new machines might turn off voters. That didn't happen, according to the study.
Those showing "the greatest satisfaction were those who used touch screens," MacManus said. And "older voters were much more thrilled with them than younger ones."
More than 90 percent said they were satisfied with the job poll workers did, another gratifying finding considering the experience some South Florida voters had on primary day, Sept. 10.
That day, poll workers were widely blamed for not knowing how to deal with new voting systems, not turning them on early enough and in some cases not opening polls on time.
But last week, fewer than 5 percent of voters surveyed said poll workers' performance was poor or fair.
A particularly gratifying finding, MacManus said, was that minorities, who complained in 2000 of having the most difficulty voting, were most likely to say voting was better this time around.
David Host, spokesman for the Department of State, which oversees elections, called the survey "great news." Of those who said they didn't vote, a third said they weren't registered. The next most cited reason was that the person was too busy, mentioned by nearly 10 percent of respondents.
Voter turnout statewide last week was 53 percent.
The large number of nonvoters is a big remaining problem, said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
"I wouldn't sit around and have everybody pat themselves on the back, when in (many) counties a majority of the eligible voters didn't bother to vote," he said.
"We have to continue to explore voting reforms that will bring in more people to the process."
-- The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this report.