'Paper' vote recount: Is it just for show?
PHIL LONG, MARC CAPUTO AND JACK DOLAN
Miami Herald
Nov 17, 2006
SARASOTA - For nine hours, dozens of staunch Democrats and Republicans hunkered down Thursday in a cavernous warehouse on the outskirts of town for the seemingly futile task of checking a computer's math.
The outcome of this ''paper'' recount, mandated under Florida's post-2000 election law, is probably a foregone conclusion. About 18,380 nonvotes are destined to remain ''undervotes'' in the 13th Congressional District race where Republican Vern Buchanan leads Democrat Christine Jennings by 396 votes.
Still, the recount volunteers -- most past retirement age, many straining through bifocals -- pressed on, scrutinizing printed ''ballot summaries'' from Sarasota County's electronic voting system, not actual ballots.
''It's a meaningless ritual,'' said David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor and voting machine expert. ``This is their fig leaf to say they're complying with Florida's recount law.''
Unlike actual paper ballots, with their notorious hanging chads, the printed ballot summaries reveal nothing new about a voter's intent, leaving very little for even the teams of partisan lawyers assembled here to argue about.
''We're doing this because it's a process required by statute,'' Republican lawyer Hayden Dempsey said with an almost apologetic roll of the eyes. ``Our opponents have raised baseless questions; hopefully, this will help restore people's confidence in the system.''
But there's growing sentiment -- expressed for the first time by leading Republican lawmakers recently -- that the machines should be replaced by paper ballots.
Meanwhile, the Democrats' lawyer, Alex Heckler, argues that the recount is flawed because the printouts show only the summary of the voters' selections -- they are not actual screen grabs of the electronic ballots voters touched.
Heckler said he believes the law requires the supervisor of elections to provide an actual screen shot.
''If that doesn't exist, we got some problems,'' Heckler said.
ARE YOU KIDDING?
''Screen grabs?'' asked Kathy Dent, Sarasota supervisor of elections. ''For 140,000 individual votes? You can't get them. The machine doesn't have them. This is the audit trail we have,'' she said, gesturing to the room full of seniors bent over tables.
The Buchanan/Jennings race looks poised to become a significant test case for this new body of law, and it's more than likely headed to court, if not Congress, for a final say.
After a hearing on Thursday before Circuit Judge Deno Economou, lawyers for Secretary of State Sue Cobb said a planned state audit of the election had been delayed ''indefinitely.'' All the voting materials are to remain sequestered until the recount is complete. Cobb had planned to start the audit as early as Wednesday of this week.
By 5 p.m. Thursday, observers estimated that nearly half the machine summaries had been scrutinized, but none had been contested.
Jennings picked up one vote in Sarasota from 571 paper absentee ballots, which also were scrutinized on Thursday.
Similar recounts under way in Desoto, Hardee, Charlotte and Manatee counties yielded an additional five votes for Jennings. She now trails Buchanan by 396 votes.
About 150 people showed up at a meeting sponsored by liberal group People for the American Way at the Sarasota Hyatt Thursday evening to express their concerns about the voting process.
Ina Arnell told The Miami Herald that she had to go back three times to get the machine to record her vote for Jennings.
''At the time, I didn't think anything about it,'' she said. ``Now I'm terribly suspicious over that. Why that race?''
About 13 percent of ballots cast on the electronic voting machines in Sarasota did not record a choice for Buchanan or Jennings. The undervote rate was only 1 percent in the U.S. Senate race and the governor's race, which appeared on either side of the 13th district race on the ballot.
MANY ARE DEMOCRATS
Many of the voters who complained about having to go back and reenter their choice in the 13th district race were Democrats, who worry that the touch-screen system was somehow biased against accepting votes for Jennings.
If it turns out that a disproportionate number of the undervotes came from people who voted a straight Democratic ticket in other races, ''then we will have sufficient proof to show something went wrong,'' Heckler said. ``That just wouldn't be logical.''
But Heckler said he's not counting on that. For him, the frustration is that the printed ballot summaries provide no way to go back and determine voter intent.
''Just because the summary report says undervote'' doesn't prove the voter didn't make a choice, he said.
The final election results have to be certified by Sarasota officials by Saturday. So the recounting of the ballot summaries will begin again this morning and continue until all 18,380 have been looked at.
Click here for more (Miami Herald)
