State: Election chiefs put dent in deal

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Association of Counties could collect hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a deal it crafted to exclusively endorse one vendor's voting equipment.

The arrangement -- which is drawing criticism from elections supervisors throughout the state -- calls for the county lobbying group to endorse machines sold by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) of Omaha in return for a piece of the profits.

In exchange, the company offers extended warranties, free training, software discounts and reduced prices to counties that buy its merchandise, at a time when Florida's election machinery must be overhauled as a result of the chaos that followed the November election.

A nine-page contract released Tuesday says ES&S will pay the association a fee, equal to 0.5 percent of its revenues up to $50-million and 0.25 percent on all revenues over $50-million. That translates into $250,000 if ES&S sells $50-million worth of precinct-based optical scanners or its more expensive touch screens to the 41 counties shopping for new equipment in time for 2002.

The Florida Association of Counties has a yearly operating budget of nearly $3-million, according to executive director Mary Kay Cariseo. She signed the endorsement contract with ES&S's chief financial officer, Thomas O'Brien, on June 21.

"This is not mandatory," Cariseo said. "The bottom line is, we have an opportunity to save the taxpayers some money. If some of the supervisors decide to go with ES&S, they will get this additional discount."

Cariseo said any equipment marketed by ES&S with her group's seal of approval must first be certified by Secretary of State Katherine Harris' office. Those tests are now under way, in the most exhaustive review of voting-machine reliability in the state's history.

But elections experts and county commissioners view the cash-for-endorsement deal as a big blunder. Elections supervisors in Tampa, Tallahassee and Fort Walton Beach blasted it while a fourth, in Miami-Dade, said he would simply ignore it.

Hillsborough County Commission Chairwoman Pat Frank said she worries that the deal could thwart competition and that each county should be free to make decisions.

"If they're just going out there to get some money for the association, that's not how the issue should be approached," Frank said. "I think that's highly inappropriate. It should be the best equipment for the best price. No kickbacks."

The endorsement deal -- disclosed by the St. Petersburg Times on Friday -- surfaces at a time when some of the largest counties, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas and Hillsborough, are about to solicit proposals from ES&S and its rivals.

Patricia Hollarn, the elections supervisor in Okaloosa County in Fort Walton Beach, calls the endorsement "rather questionable." David Leahy, supervisor of elections in Miami-Dade, said he would ignore the sales pitch and hoped to persuade county commissioners to buy touch screens. Leon County Supervisor Ion Sancho said he was "offended" that any county would be urged to make such a crucial decision based on cost first, instead of accuracy.

"The Florida Association of Counties apparently doesn't care much about its reputation if it enters into deals in which they let financial considerations become the driving force for good public policy decisions," Sancho said.

"They have no knowledge to recommend one company over another," Hollarn said.

Pinellas County Commission Chairman Calvin Harris said: "We will make our decision based on the best technology for the best price. We are not going to take a recommendation without having any knowledge, number one, and without the supervisor saying it's great, number two, and having it fit the budget, number three."

Now that the state Legislature has made punch-card voting a relic of elections past, and is putting up some of the money for replacement machines, Florida is a seller's market for voting equipment. A half-dozen firms are battling for business.

ES&S signed lobbyist Sandra Mortham, a former secretary of state, in February -- a month after she had signed up as a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Counties. Association leaders said Mortham played no role in the endorsement contract.

Mortham is on vacation until July 10 and cannot be reached, her office said Tuesday.

Leon and Oklaoosa counties can ignore the ES&S sales pitch: Both counties already employ precinct-based optical scanners, which had one of the lowest rates of spoiled ballots in the hotly disputed presidential election in November.

But Miami-Dade is the most coveted voting-equipment market in the country now because of its size and demographic complexity.

The state's most populous county must print ballots in three languages -- English, Spanish and Creole -- for 912,000 registered voters, a figure that could exceed 1-million by 2002. Leahy figures it would cost $20-million to $25-million for Miami-Dade to convert to touch screens, and most of that amount would have to be paid by county taxpayers, not the state.

Despite the higher price, Leahy insisted: "I want the best system that's on the market. I want to make sure it's as voter-friendly as we can get, not prone to voter error, and that it is something our poll workers can administer. . . . We'll pick the best system for our county, then worry what the price is."

- Staff writers Bill Varian and Lisa Greene contributed to this report.

Recent coverage

Vote device deal raises questions (June 29, 2001)

Supervisors wrestle with voting options (June 5, 2001)

Florida's delegation slow to act on election reform (May 16, 2001)

Iorio pushes for national voting reform (May 11, 2001)

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