State: Governor favors bubble ballots

ST. PETERSBURG -- As he prepared to head north for his brother's inauguration, Gov. Jeb Bush declared Thursday that Floridians will never again go through a major election with antiquated and problematic voting equipment.

If the governor has his way, in 2002 all Floridians will cast their ballots by filling in bubbles, a la the SAT or lottery forms. They can be quickly scanned and counted by a computer, and give voters a second chance before rejecting their ballot because of a mistake.

He wants counties to pick up a "significant" share of the roughly $30-million expense of upgrading to optical-scan equipment, but he sees no problem in doing away with punch cards by the 2002 election.

"This is a doable deal," Bush told the St. Petersburg Times editorial board. "I believe we'll solve this problem, and I believe we'll have a single standard."

Forty-one counties, including Citrus and Hernando, already have optical-scan voting systems, which in most cases alert a voter if they have voted for no one or too many candidates. A statewide task force looking at improving Florida's voting system also appears to be leaning toward embracing optical scans.

Another widely discussed option is touch-screen voting systems that work much like an ATM. Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark, among others, thinks that's the most accurate system, but expects the public acceptance could be hampered because it produces no paper ballot.

Aside from the lack of a paper trail, touchscreen systems have yet to be approved by state elections leaders and are far more expensive.

"I have no problem with the optical-scan system," Clark said. "I just don't want people to think we're going from something that has a lot of weaknesses to something that's perfect. There is no perfect system."

Optical-scan systems frequently count no vote on a ballot when someone has not properly filled in a bubble. Still, their track record is better than the punch card system used in Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and 21 other counties.

Statewide, nearly 174,000 ballots did not register a vote for president in November, either because readers detected no vote or too many. Among punch card ballots, 3.84 percent went uncounted, while optical-scan ballots had a combined rate of 1.27 percent.

Nearly 283,000 voters in Orange County, the biggest optical-scan county, voted in November, and 0.83 percent of their ballots were rejected as undervotes or overvotes. Most of those were absentee ballots, where the actual machines weren't used.

Bush noted that Orange County also finished its tally early, contrasting that to his home county, Miami-Dade. He recounted sitting with family members that night in anguish waiting for late results.

"I'm in Austin, Texas, everybody's staring at me, and I can't get into the damn secretary of state's Web page to find out what the counts are," he said. "So I'm calling up friends in Miami trying to figure out which precincts are out at 3 in the bleeping morning. There's got to be a better way. I mean, it just cries out for change."

Bush has not budgeted anything for election improvements, but has $30-million set aside in his proposed budget that could be used. He argued, though, that it would be unfair to force counties that have already invested in election improvements to subsidize those that haven't.

But Hillsborough elections supervisor Pam Iorio, president of the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections, says Tallahassee has a major role.

"It really is a state responsibility to fund elections equipment, particularly if the state is going to mandate a single, unfied voting system," she said.

"I don't agree with that at all," said state Sen. Jim Sebesta, R-St. Petersburg, a member of the elections task force and former Hillsborough elections supervisor. He noted that the voting systems will handle many or mostly local races, so the only question should be how much financial help local governments get from the state and federal government.

Speaking to the Times editorial board, the governor also touted the importance of growth management reforms in Florida, but said changes may have to be phased in gradually. In a move likely to stir opposition from home builders, Bush said one of his first priorities will be pushing for a requirement that schools be in place before new housing developments are completed.

"It is the No. 1 infrastructure for most people that buy homes, and we should not site schools in a vacuum from where we site homes," Bush said, adding that he could not predict how receptive legislators would be.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk