Florida to Replace Missing Election Ballots
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New absentee ballots will be sent to voters in one of Florida&#39;s most populous counties to replace thousands that disappeared in the run-up to Tuesday&#39;s US elections, an election official said on Thursday.
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Voters clamored for reform after the fiasco in Florida four years ago. But when they return to vote again for president on Nov. 2, many may be surprised to discover how little has changed.
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Once again, Florida is embroiled in a dispute over vote counting in the presidential election.
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By Bill Hirschman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel  Dec. 12--Broward County's $23 million touch-screen voting system may be scrapped unless commissioners find a way to create a paper trail.
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Pre-election tensions mounted Thursday in Florida amid claims of voter intimidation, promises that absentee ballots will reach the Broward County citizens who are missing them, and concerns that Republicans will question the authenticity of thousands of votes on Election Day.
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MIAMI, OCTOBER 18 : Early voting for next monthâs Presidential election got underway in Florida on Monday, with Democrats in particular urging supporters to use their early ballot as a means of avoiding a repeat of the recount fiasco in the 2000 election
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Four years after the &quot;Florida fiasco&quot;, the battleground state is back in the spotlight as thousands of absentee ballots went missing and campaigners traded claims of vote rigging.
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Touch-screen voting machines in the Sunshine State insist 18,000 voters had no preference in a congressional race won by fewer than 400 votes. A recount is under way, but that just means printing a hard copy of the contested ballots. By Kim Zetter.
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Washington - The problems that plagued the 2000 American presidential election are likely to be repeated because &quot;basic international requirements&quot; for a fair vote are missing in Florida, former president and veteran elections monitor Jimmy Carter has
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After a series of tests on e-voting machines, a U.S. government auditor still doesn&#39;t know what contributed to 18,000 unmarked ballots in a Florida congressional race in 2006.The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) checked the firmware and the ballot display and ran calibration tests on a sample of Election Systems &amp; Software (ES&amp;S) iVotronic e-voting machines, the agency said in a report released Friday. Those tests, combined with others done by the GAO and state of Florida, &quot;have significantly reduced the possibility that the iVotronic [machines] were the cause of the undervote,&quot; said the report, authored by Nabajyoti Barkakati, acting chief technologist for the GAO&#39;s applied research and methods division.The GAO believes the ES&amp;S machines have been adequately tested, the report says. &quot;Given the complex interaction of people, processes, and technology that must work effectively together to achieve a successful election,&quot; other factors, including intentional undervotes or ballot interaction problems, may have caused the undervote, the GAO said.Democratic candidate Christine Jennings lost by 369 votes in the 2006 13th Congressional District race, but more than 18,000 people who cast votes in other district races failed to have votes recorded in the congressional race. About 4,000 more votes were recorded in the Sarasota County Southern District Hospital Board election than in the House race.Jennings is again running for the congressional seat this year.The GAO report &quot;leaves most of the major questions unanswered,&quot; said the Verified Voting Foundation, an advocacy group critical of e-voting machines. The GAO report didn&#39;t address potential problems with touch-screen sensitivity and low batteries, or reports of undervotes in other races, the foundation said in its own report , based on a leaked copy of the GAO report.&quot;The GAO report leaves us with almost as many questions as before, and the most important one -- what caused the ... undervote problem -- is left unanswered,&quot; the foundation report says. &quot;The nature of the complex voting system in question, and the difficulty in auditing such a system, may mean such questions will remain indefinitely, but it is clear that more can and should be done to resolve the outstanding issues.&quot;The foundation suggested auditors could conduct more tests, including tests of touch-screen sensitivity and a check for software bugs beyond the GAO&#39;s check that the software matched versions certified by Florida.&quot;As someone who&#39;s interested in what happened in this election, my questions aren&#39;t answered,&quot; said David Dill, the foundation&#39;s founder and a computer science professor at Stanford University. &quot;I don&#39;t think we&#39;re going to get any idea about what happened in that election without a lot more investigation.&quot;The GAO report &quot;cannot be interpreted as a clean bill of health for the machines,&quot; Dill added. &quot;They did three little tests ... out of a spectrum of a lot of things, and they aren&#39;t the most important things to look at,&quot; he said.ES&amp;S, in a statement, said the GAO report shows its machines &quot;performed well&quot; in the election. GAO&#39;s findings echo studies by Florida State University and the Florida Department of State, both saying there was &quot;no evidence&quot; of ES&amp;S machine malfunction, the company said. &quot;The collective findings of these and other tests demonstrate that Sarasota County&#39;s voting system performed exactly as it was designed to function,&quot; the company said.The Election Technology Council, a trade group representing ES&amp;S and three other e-voting vendors, said the report suggests that a paper ballot to accompany the e-voting machines wouldn&#39;t necessarily solve problems. The Verified Voting Foundation and other groups have pushed for printouts to be used with e-voting machines.Elections include people, processes and technology, said David Beirne, the council&#39;s executive director. &quot;Paper is not a magic bullet,&quot; he said. &quot;It can provide an additional layer of verification for the voter, but it alone is not going to satisfy all of the stakeholders, which is why it is important to look at all of the circumstances surrounding an election to determine its overall performance.&quot;The GAO report shows the need for assurance tools that verify the operation of the e-voting machines&#39; software, Beirne added.
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Authorities in Florida were looking for 58,000 absentee ballots whose disappearance stirred renewed controversy in the state that held up the 2000 presidential election for five weeks.
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Up to 58,000 absentee ballots may never have reached the Broward County voters who requested them more than two weeks ago, election officials said, and state police are investigating.
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FORT LAUDERDALE (Florida), Oct. 28. - Tens of thousands of postal ballots have gone missing in Florida, sparking concern over irregularities in the poll campaign.
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Election Day is still two weeks away, but voters across the state have the option Monday of beginning to cast their ballots early in this pivotal battleground state...
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FORT LAUDERDALE, United States  - The disappearance of tens of thousands of ballots has raised new questions about Florida&#39;s ability to avert a repeat of the 2000 debacle, and fueled protests in the battleground state.
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Thousands of Floridians who think they're registered to vote could be turned away at the polls Nov. 2 because their voter registration forms weren't completely filled out, officials said Friday.
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Voters line up to check in before using the electronic voting booths, foreground, on the first day of early voting Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 at the Supervisor of Elections Office in West Palm Beach, Fla.