Jun 2, 2008 8:50 pm US/Eastern
Activists Fear Problems With New Voting Machines
700 Tests Planned For New Machines In Miami-Dade
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
With the presidential elections just five months away, there are fears that the nation could see a replay of the voting debacle of 2000.
And critics of the current voting system say South Florida is at the center of the concern.
Instead of hanging chads, critics say this year's presidential election could be jeopardized by jammed scanners and confused voters.
Lester Sola, supervisor of
Miami Dade's Elections Department, showed the
CBS4 I-Team how the new optical scan system will work in the November general election.
"You're going to see ovals over to the left of either candidates or questions. We want to make sure they have a nice, complete oval. So you will insert your ballot. The orientation doesn't matter and the system will read your ballot and there's a message that will accept it," Sola told
CBS4's Stephen Stock.
But critics say it's not so simple and predict the state's voting system will once again be the focus of national attention.
"We have 15 counties that are switching equipment from DRE touch screen voting machines to optical scan systems without ever having used that before," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chair of the
Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.
Those 15 counties include Miami-Dade,
Broward,
Monroe and Palm Beach Counties.
Despite promises by lawmakers and Governor Charlie Crist that all voting machines and hardware would be officially certified by last September, these tri-lingual machines, developed especially for South Florida, weren't completely certified until last week.
Critics say that leaves no time to work out any bugs, no time to prepare or practice for what could become another tightly contested presidential election where every vote literally counts.
"The problem is the time frame we went from touch screen voting machines to optical screens in less than a year and the voters are going to have one election to practice," Rodriguez-Taseff said.
Florida's Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, in town for a literacy event with the Miami Dolphins, says he's confident Florida is prepared to handle any problems.
"The installation of firmware is nowhere near problematic like it was with touch-screens," Browning told Stock.
When
CBS4 News asked Browning what he would tell the critics that are worried we're going to see a 2000 election all over again, he said, "Go read a book. Go read a book. We're not going to have the problems of 2000."
Miami-Dade's Sola is also confident, although he admits he would have liked to have more time to prepare both his poll workers and the voters for this new way of voting.
"We actually didn't get the final certification until last week for the system. It is worrisome but it just tells we have to train. We've gone through a conversion in the past and the Department, quite frankly, didn't do very well in converting from the punch card system to the touch screen system," Sola said.
In fact, in Miami Dade they plan to run more than 700 mock elections to test these systems, and unlike the last election with touch screen machines, there will be a paper trail -- actual ballots to be reviewed and counted in the event there is a problem.
Anyone interested in working at a Miami Dade polling station on election day can
Click Here for more information.
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