Elections officials are ready to reassure

Elections must go on, they say, as they consider voter education, more volunteers at polls and other short-term fixes.

By ANITA KUMAR

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 17, 2000

With the presidential race behind them, election officials are hoping to prevent another voting fiasco.

Some don't have much time to prepare.

While most counties are winding down from the drawn-out presidential contest, others have started gearing up for elections in just a couple of months.

Supervisors of elections are planning to have more volunteers greet voters at the polls to encourage them to read instructions and remind them to check for bits of chad on the back of ballots.

Some are even considering holding community meetings at nursing homes, shopping centers and Rotary clubs to try to familiarize voters with ballot machines.

"The public perception is you can't trust this stuff. What can we do to reassure people?" said Fae Mansfield, assistant supervisor of elections in Collier County. "It's just going to take education. We'll do whatever the voters want us to do to assure them this is practically a fool-proof system."

Mansfield said she can't believe voters associate so many problems with the punch-ballot system -- a system her office has used for 22 years. She said the county plans a huge education program before the next election.

"The reassurance will be voter-by-voter," said Kurt Browning, supervisor of elections in Pasco County, which will have five city elections in April. "You can't run an ad saying, "Be calm, everything's cool.' "

Several counties, including Osceola, Palm Beach, Sarasota and Alachua, will hold municipal elections in March. Election officials are expecting a high turnout in Pinellas, where some 20 candidates will compete for seven offices in the city of St. Petersburg.

"We need to be visible in the community," said Deborah Clark, Pinellas' supervisor of elections. "We do this already but we can do more of it. We just need to do more of the same."

Clark, whose office has used punch-card machines for more than two decades, said she also is considering adding workers to each polling place to remind voters to pay attention and to ask for a clean ballot if they feel they voted in error.

"We don't want people to wake up the next morning and wonder if they voted accurately," she said.

Supervisors, particularly those who use the much-maligned punch-card machines, said they don't have enough time to swap their equipment by next year's elections.

"I'm not really making any changes," said Kathy Dent, supervisor of elections in Sarasota County. "Can't."

But, she said, she is bracing for the spotlight when two at-large Sarasota commissioners face re-election in the spring. "I think we're going to be under a closer scrutiny than ever before," she said.

Clay, Manatee and Polk, among other counties, already have held elections since Nov. 7. Miami-Dade has had two and will hold another five in February and March.

"It hasn't stopped," said Gisela Salas, assistant supervisor of elections in Miami-Dade. "It's incredible. We're almost always having an election."

Salas said voters in the most recent elections -- in Miami Lakes and El Portal -- appeared to be more careful as they cast their ballots in the shadow of the presidential election.

"I'm sure people will continue to take a closer look," she said.

In some counties, mostly the ones that do not use the punch-card system, officials acknowledge that voter confidence throughout the state is low but say they do not have problems and don't plan any changes.

"Our presidential election worked out fine," said Bob Sweat, supervisor of elections in Manatee County. "We have never had any problems with the system."

Officials in other counties are breathing a sigh of relief because they don't have to worry about another election for two years. Duval, Leon and Lee don't have elections scheduled until 2002.

But, they say, they will be busy with the huge number of public record requests they expect to pour in as the fallout from the presidential elections continues.

"It's not like we won't have things to do," said Janet Olin, Leon's assistant supervisor of elections.

- Times staff writer Kathryn Wexler contributed to this report.

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