A new ballot system is accused of erasing records, but the courts say nobody should expect it to be perfect. So is Florida heading for another vote-rigging row?
By Ros Davidson, Sunday Herald (Glasgow)
It's no accident that Florida is where rock star Bruce Springsteen will end his headline-grabbing "vote for change" tour in October. Or that President Bush and Democratic contender John Kerry have visited the sunshine state about 50 times already this year, and there are still 12 weeks of campaigning left. Or that anti-Bush film-maker Michael Moore is promising to take his camera to Florida hotspots on election day on November 2.
Few Americans can forget that four years ago the president won Florida by 527 votes.
That was after a bitterly contested 37 days of recounts and lawsuits. In African- American and other poor Democratic-leaning precincts many voters had been turned away from polling stations.
Florida, centre of the most egregious mishaps in 2000, is too close to call. If Ohio is the foremost battleground for campaigning, Florida is the election's swamp of controversy and fraud. Florida is also the largest swing state, any of which could tip the final result. More money is being spent on registering voters here than in any other while billions in public money has been spent to clean up the system.
Yet the upcoming vote could be 2000 redux. "Florida's election system was a national disgrace, and it is well on its way to becoming one again," warned the New York Times.
Most of Florida's electorate will vote electronically, an attempt to avoid "hanging chads" - tiny pieces of paper - that so famously jammed punchcard machines in 2000. But the electronic systems do not produce paper records.
Florida's governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother, is accused of refusing numerous requests for a paper trail. The Republican-led state legislature has also exempted the machines from recount rules that are required for other voting methods.
In March, during the Democratic primary, precincts with touch-screen rather than optical machines registered eight to nine times as many blank ballots. "There is no reasonable reason for the discrepancy," said Ion Sanchoone, an election supervisor.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood countered that those using touch-screen machines must have intended to cast no vote. She said critics were trying to destroy Florida's credibility.
But in the state's first major test of touch-screen voting, in Miami in 2002, almost all of the records disappeared in two computer crashes a few months later. The loss only emerged in July after a citizens' group demanded an audit.
The results, for the Democratic governor's primary, were eventually found on stray CDs. Also, on the day of the election, computers had failed to start properly and clerks seemed confused by the technology.
Janet Reno, President Clinton's former Attorney General, lost by a slim 4,794 votes. "This is disturbing news and casts doubt on Florida's ability to run a fair election this fall," said the New York Times.
On Friday, a state appeals court dismissed a lawsuit that sought a paper trail, ruling that voters are not guaranteed "a perfect voting system".
Florida is having problems, too, with its list of registered voters. Officials secretly purged tens of thousands of felons earlier this year - 2500 of them erroneously.
More at: http://www.sundayherald.com/43943
"We're in a fucking stagmire."
--Little Carmine, 'The Sopranos'