Watchdog group urges voting system audit (Florida)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Tue, Jun. 29, 2004

ELECTIONS


Watchdog group urges voting system audit

A Miami-Dade watchdog group wants the governor to order an independent check on voting machines around the state before the next election.

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS

[e-mail]


TALLAHASSEE - A Miami-Dade elections watchdog organization is traveling to the state capital today to turn up the heat on the governor: The group wants him to order a statewide audit of voting systems to check if the machines will work on Election Day.The Miami-Dade Elections Reform Coalition will ask Gov. Jeb Bush to order the Legislature to earmark money for an audit of both the touch-screen and optical-scan voting systems before the Aug. 31 election.

State law allows the Legislature to require ''an independent audit of the voting system in any county.'' Coalition members are seeking the audit because they believe glitches discovered in the audit trail on iVotronic touch-screen machines -- in use in Miami-Dade, Broward and nine other counties -- may be evidence of a broader problem.

The coalition, which will be joined in the announcement by the League of Women Voters and the ACLU of Florida, also wants a random audit of some optical-scan machines.

Touch-screen machines are used in 15 of Florida's 67 counties. Eleven of the counties use iVotronic machines, which are manufactured by Electronic Systems & Software of Nebraska. Tests performed by election officials in Miami-Dade and Lee counties have found the machines to have occasional flaws in their audit logs when data is downloaded onto a flash card, or temporary file.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9035725.htm
(Free registration required)

[struggle4progress]

1. The Miami-Dade Elections Reform Coalition sound like nice folk, and ...

they sound as if they are being very patient and reasonable about these black boxes with "occasional flaws." Of course, such "occasional flaws" cost Al Gore the White House:

"Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=3337&fcategory_desc=The%20Bush%20Crime%20Family
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm

So, frankly, I'm glad I don't live in Florida: if I did, I'd be tempted to growl darkly about the "occasional flaws" which cause some firearms to discharge accidently in the presence of election fraud. As I do not live in Florida, I can instead say how very much I admire the dedication (and restraint) shown by the Miami-Dade Elections Reform Coalition, as they seek to save our democracy.