Opinion
Invalid Motivation
THE SUNCOAST NEWS
Published: February 12, 2008
The Legislature, with the support of Gov. Charlie Crist, last year forced counties like Pasco and Pinellas to scrap the touch-screen voting equipment they had just spent millions purchasing. Touch-screen voting was supposed to solve problems associated with punch-card balloting, which was supposedly the cause of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential voting controversy in Florida.Published: February 12, 2008
A major factor behind the hasty ditching of touch-screen voting was the 2006 Florida District 13 U.S. House race, in Sarasota. In that race Republican Vern Buchanan beat Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. There were, however, some 18,000 ballots in Sarasota County on which no votes were cast in the Buchanan-Jennings race. These "undervotes" were widely cited as evidence that touch-screen voting is flawed and vulnerable to illicit manipulation.
Jennings asked the U.S. House, controlled by Democrats, to declare the election invalid and name her the winner. In response, House leaders ordered the Government Accountability Office to investigate. Yesterday (Friday), the GAO released its report. It concludes Sarasota County's touch-screen voting machines weren't the problem in the District 13 race. Instead, the GAO says, a lot of people simply chose not to vote in that contest. Buchanan and Jennings had spent most of the campaign pounding each other for alleged ethical lapses, conceivably alienating a lot of voters in the process.
Since the 2000 vote-counting controversy, we have been saying the problems at the polls have been caused by people, not machines. Punch cards, touch screens and optical scanners all have their pluses and minuses. They will count ballots equally well, however, as long as voters follow what are pretty simple directions. Since the money to switch to optical scanning has been spent, we might as well stick with it, a bit poorer but - dare we hope? - a bit wiser.