Optical scan voting machines are an upgrade from punch cards, both sides agree. But in case of a recount, they could still be open to interpretation.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO, Times Staff Writer
Published October 27, 2004
[Times photo: Bill Serne]
Waiting on democracy: Charlotte Kendall stands at the front of the line along with other folks waiting to vote early at the Supervisor of Elections office in the 501 Building in St. Petersburg on First Avenue N and Fifth Street on Tuesday. At times, the wait was an hour long. On Monday, officials said 854 people voted. Early voting continues through Monday.
BROOKSVILLE - Tony Miziko voted early last week and was relieved he didn't have to cast his ballot on a touch screen machine.
"Because there's a paper trail, this system is perfect," said Miziko, 26.
Not quite.
Nearly 18 percent of the ballots rejected during the 2000 presidential election in Florida were cast on the optical scan system Miziko used.
While the world focused on punch card ballots and their hanging chads, optical scan ballots drew little attention.
Tuesday's election could be different.
"Basically, because you can retrieve those votes and reconstruct what happened, the observability is going to be more front and center, especially with the absentee ballots," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has researched voting technology nationwide.
Statewide rules developed since the 2000 recount should mean fewer rejected ballots. But with lawyers on both sides looking for any evidence of irregularity, disputes are inevitable.
That is particularly true for absentee ballots, because voter errors cannot be caught and corrected as they can at the polls. But even a vote cast at a polling place might not be counted if the voter failed to follow instructions.
While roughly half of all votes in the state will be cast on optical scan machines, all absentee voters will use optical scan ballots.
With optical scan machines, voters fill in ovals or connect arrows and feed the paper ballots into a scanner that records the votes.
The machines alert voters when they cast more than one vote in a race. Voters are given a chance to fix the problem at the polling place.
But that's impossible with absentee ballots, which are mailed or dropped off at elections office and tabulated on election day.
And even at a polling place, the machines don't alert anyone when a vote has been improperly marked on the ballot.
"They make an X, underline the candidate's name, circle the voter's party," said Susan Gill, Citrus County elections supervisor.
Those votes won't be counted unless there is a manual recount, when local canvassing boards try to discern voter intent.
In 2000, counties interpreted ballots differently.
"That's why you saw all those people looking at punch cards, wondering was this a dimpled, hanging or pregnant chad," said Mark Pritchett of the Collins Center for Public Policy in Tallahassee, which recommended uniform standards for manual recounts. "It was whatever the judge in that locality set as the standard."
The new rules are supposed to ensure a uniform recount. They also take a liberal approach to discerning voter intent. Ballots that might have been tossed four years ago will be counted this time.
If, for example, the oval or arrow next to a candidate's name or party affiliation is circled or underlined or the candidate's name has been written onto the ballot, it will be counted.
Even ballots with "an X, a check mark, a plus sign, an asterisk or a star, any portion of which is contained in a single oval ..." will be counted, according to the rules.
In a rare point of agreement, lawyers for both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry say they consider the technology an improvement over four years ago.
"There are advantages and disadvantages in every system, but I've not heard of any problems with the optical scan machines," said Barry Richards, lead Tallahassee attorney for President Bush.
Mitchell Berger of Fort Lauderdale, general counsel for Kerry's Florida legal team, said no one should be discouraged from voting because the system isn't perfect.
"Both the electronic and the optical scan machines are hundreds of percentage points better than the punch cards were," he said. "It's unfair to say it any other way."
