Florida Voting Under Microscope Again
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Cheryl Roberts was impressed with Florida's new voting machines in the 2002 primary, when she cast an electronic ballot for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride. But a series of computer glitches &#151; including startling cases of corrupted or missing data &#151; has undermined her faith. So for Tuesday's primary in Florida, Roberts is turning to an absentee ballot so Broward County has a paper record of her vote.
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President Bush may have received up to 260,000 more votes than he should have in Florida counties that used touch-screen voting machines, according to an academic analysis. Researchers call on Florida to examine the results. By Kim Zetter.
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With polls showing nearly equal numbers of Florida voters for President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the election's outcome may again hinge on a Florida recount. And the more that Floridians learn about how voting machines work, the more they question whether the 15 counties with paperless voting systems can accurately count and recount votes.
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Florida's attempts to avoid a repeat of the 2000 election fiasco took another hit late Monday when federal judges ordered a lower court to hear a lawsuit demanding that electronic voting machines be equipped to print receipts for voters.
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After Florida leapfrogs Michigan in the final ratings and claims a spot in the Jan. 8 BCS game, scrutiny falls upon the Harris Interactive poll for choosing a scope of voters that may have been too broad.
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Flawed voting arrangements mean Florida faces another election farce, says former US President Jimmy Carter.
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Observers, both Republican and Democrat, have become a new addition to early voting precincts throughout South Florida. At most early voting sites, they&#39;re found sitting quietly in a corner
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Complaint sheets in hand, a voters' bill of rights in their kit, a small army of volunteers has descended on the battleground state of Florida to watch over Tuesday's voting and help avert a repeat of the 2000 election debacle.
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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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Tensions have been mounting in the runup to the presidential election as Florida politicians trade accusations over claims of fraud, missing absentee ballots and concerns that thousands of voter registrations will be challenged in "hand-to-hand combat at the precincts" on Nov. 2.
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Ralph Nader is back on Florida's ballot &#151; probably for good this time.
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WASHINGTON - Voting security advocates in the U.S. are bracing for a repeat of problems in the upcoming general election that could rival Florida during the 2000 presidential race.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Ralph Nader is back on Florida's ballot - probably for good this time...
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By The Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio  Feb. 7--Florida, described by voting experts as the Bermuda Triangle of elections, announced last week that it will abandon electronic touch-screen voting by Election Day 2008.
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Just five weeks before Election Day, a federal appeals court Monday revived a lawsuit demanding that all Florida voters who use touchscreen machines receive a paper receipt, in case a recount becomes necessary.
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The disappearance of tens of thousands of ballots has raised new questions about Florida's ability to avert a repeat of the 2000 debacle, and fueled protests in the battleground state.
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A Sarasota recount is complicated by electronic voting systems. One solution: Bring back paper.