State: U.S. to repay Florida for vote reforms

ORLANDO -- After digging deep to fix its broken election system, Florida will get back the millions it spent to buy new touch screen voting machines and make other election improvements, courtesy of the federal government.

A state elections task force learned Monday that the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, signed by President Bush in October, will send Florida and its counties $175-million over the next few years.

That amount more than covers the $32-million the state spent to buy new voting machines, train poll workers and update its database of registered voters. It also makes up for the more than $100-million that Florida counties spent on voting equipment after the disastrous 2000 presidential recount.

The state expects to spend an additional $9-million to make polling places more accessible for disabled voters and about $8-million to further improve its voter database, and those expenditures would be covered as well.

Not covered will be the considerable expense of maintaining the systems. Though the machines were initially billed as saving counties hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper costs, Florida election officials have learned the cost of administering the computerized systems and training people to run them is higher than imagined.

Secretary of State Jim Smith said Florida deserves a larger reimbursement because it waded into the touch screen market before any other state. As other states go to the same technology over the next two years, more companies will be vying for their business and the machines will become cheaper, he said.

Florida should get a "premium" for blazing the trail, Smith told Chet Kalis, a staffer with the House Committee on Administration, which shepherded the federal legislation.

But Kalis said the money went only so far. "You have our gratitude," he smilingly told Smith.

The exchange took place at a daylong meeting of a task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to recommend improvements on Florida's 2001 rewrite of its election law.

Florida stands at or near the front of the line for federal money. As the state that accidentally opened the nation's eyes to problems with outdated punch card and lever machines, it also led the way to reform and is ahead of other states in qualifying for federal money.

"You've got a lot of the work taken care of," Kalis told the 15-member task force of business people, legislators, educators, lawyers and election officials. Smith and Tad Foote, the University of Miami chancellor, co-chair the panel.

The federal money will go to a state government in serious need of new revenue as it weathers a budget crisis. It also will flow to counties like Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco, which invested a combined $30-million in new touch screens.

The money earmarked for Florida is part of a $3.86-billion federal package approved but only partly funded by Congress. The Help America Vote Act envisions the money being spent on new voting machines, improving access for disabled voters, researching and developing new voting technology, training poll workers and recruiting more high school and college students to work on Election Day.

A large chunk, $650-million, will go to improving administration of elections and reimbursing much of the cost of buying new machines. Although the intent of the bill is to prepare for the 2004 election, the money is to be distributed through 2006.

"It's very, very helpful to the entire nation; it is really good public policy," said Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio, who persuaded her County Commission to spend $12-million on a new touch screen system that performed smoothly in this fall's elections.

Also Monday, the task force discussed several proposals that would tweak Florida's election law. Among the ideas:

Reviewing the minimum standards for training poll workers and launching state-coordinated campaigns to encourage more people to work at the polls. Citing the disaster caused by ill-trained poll workers in the Sept. 10 primary, Pensacola businessman Louis Bear pushed for more rigorous training. But county election supervisors argued that most supervisors already exceed the minimum training requirements because their jobs depend on good poll worker performance.

Expanding and setting guidelines for "early voting," a form of absentee voting that proved popular with voters in the Nov. 5 general election.

Ensuring that the Legislature follows through on its promise to ensure that all disabled voters can vote independently at their polling place. Keeping the promise will require $9-million in funding in the next legislative session, which would pay for at least one audio-equipped touch screen voting machine in every precinct in counties that have paper ballots.

Doing without the second primary election, at least through 2004. For years, the second primary was held when no candidate won a majority in the first primary. The Legislature discontinued the second primary temporarily in 2001 and the task force initially voted Monday to make the change permanent. But the members changed course, bowing to state Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, who said the change should be monitored for one more election cycle.

Altering how state government oversees Florida's 67 county election officials. Suggestions included expanding the powers of the secretary of state or establishing an elections commission free of party ties.

The panel's recommendations will be finalized and sent to Gov. Bush by the end of the year.

-- Times staff writer David Karp contributed to this report.

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