May 2, 2007 10:10 pm US/Eastern
Millions Of Dollars Found For New Voting Equipment
by Michele Gillen
TALLAHASSEE (CBS4) ―
It's not everyday that you find millions of dollars, but that's exactly what happened Wednesday with millions of dollars to help our state's voting system.
The US Election Assistance Commission will allow Florida to use federal funds to replace the state's touch-screen voting machines with a verifiable paper-trail system. Until now, there was concern that the state would have to dish out all the money to revamp its voting system.
The Florida Legislature is on the verge of passing an elections bill that calls for the use of nearly $28 million dollars in federal funds to replace touch-screen voting machines used in 15 counties. But until yesterday, state lawmakers and Florida's Secretary of State did not know for sure whether they could rely on federal money from the Help America Vote Act. It appears that the state had federal money all along that was supposed to pay for a fix to the 2000 hanging chad debacle.
The Election Assistance Commission said during a public hearing in Washington that it would permit the use of federal funds.
Sandy Wayland, president of the Miami-Dade Election reform coalition is aghast over where federal dollars that are now allegedly being offered to pay for new optical scan machines are coming from. She says counties have been trying to collect these very dollars for years. They were earmarked to reimburse counties for the cost of getting rid of paper ballots replacing them with electronic voting machines.
"It says that there's been a gross mismanagement of funds and perhaps a little bit of secrecy," said Wayland. "What they were planning on doing with this money back in the day, I have no idea. The county certainly could have used it."
Counties such as Miami-Dade are still paying their debt for installing new voting equipment the first time around.
Even though Florida is one step closer to getting the optical scan machines, the question still remains as to what will be done with the instructions, which are only written in English, creating problems in multiethnic communities such as Miami-Dade.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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