By TAMARA LUSH and STEVE BOUSQUET
Published May 26, 2004
TAMPA - Local officials hope to avoid a repeat of the problem-plagued 2000 election with a $3-million project to register voters, train poll workers and educate the public about voting machines.
Elections supervisors launched the inaugural statewide voter education effort Tuesday. Florida's 67 counties will split $3-million in federal money, and another $200,000 from the state Get Out the Vote Foundation will allow counties to target specific groups of voters.
"There is no question that the eyes of the nation will be focused on Florida this year," Pasco County Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning said during a news conference at the Hillsborough County elections office.
The federal money will be used partly for mailings and advertising on radio and TV.
Pasco will spend $73,977 on voter outreach, sample ballots, public service announcements and voter guides.
Hillsborough is using $169,346 for community demonstrations on touch screen machines, sample ballots and mock elections in schools. Pinellas will spend $185,523 for similar projects.
At simultaneous announcements in Tallahassee, Orlando, South Florida and Jacksonville, the upbeat message by the supervisors was intended to neutralize critics demanding a paper trail for touch screen voting machines or skeptics of a purge of 47,000 felons from voter rolls.
"We are doing anything and everything we can to educate our voters and train our poll workers," said Pinellas Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark.
The ACLU and the NAACP will help Clark with the felons purge "to make sure we're on solid ground," she said.
Supervisors also hope to allay fears that voting machines won't have a paper audit trail on touch screen voting machines.
"We are very confident of our systems," said Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson.
In Tallahassee, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, kicked off the get-out-the-vote effort with election supervisors and members of more than a dozen groups, including the League of Women Voters, NAACP, Florida AFL-CIO, Florida Medical Association and Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities.
"We believe very strongly that, as we provide information, as we educate, that it will restore the confidence in Florida's election processes and our voting technologies," Hood said. "This, of course, is key to the success of our upcoming elections."
Also on Tuesday, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill that eliminates a requirement that a voter witness another voter's signature on an absentee ballot. Election supervisors had urged the Legislature to drop the requirement, saying some voters' ballots were not counted in past elections because they didn't know the witness signature was needed.
The governor also signed into law a bill that expands the opportunity for early voting, to 15 days before the election.
