http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/8471447.htm

April 20, 2004

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Voters unable to have printed receipt

Miami-Dade election officials say they can't install printers on the county's 7,200 voting machines in time for this year's presidential election because they lack state approval and the technology.

By Luisa Yanez, lyanez@herald.com

A proposal to add printers to Miami-Dade's touch screen voting machines by November's presidential election fizzled Monday. The culprit: The available technology is not state certified, election officials said.

''We simply cannot use the technology if it's not state certified, even if the printers were available,'' Supervisor of Elections Constance Kaplan told the County Commission's election subcommittee, while presenting the findings of a 309-page report.

Aware ''all eyes will be watching'' Miami-Dade in the upcoming presidential election, Commissioner Jimmy Morales had spearheaded an effort to install printers on the county's iVotronic machines, hoping the paper trail would restore more confidence in the process for Miami-Dade voters.

''It's hard to tell voters they can't have some sort of receipt when they vote. When you go to the ATM, you get a receipt; when you go the store, you get a receipt,'' Morales said Monday.

The reason the county cannot install the printers onto the touch-screen technology is because the state has not certified any printers for such use.

iVotronic vendors must wait for specifications from federal and state election officials before they can proceed with a prototype.

''They have to set standards and tell us what they want,'' said Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the Nebraska-based makers of the iVotronic. ''They have to decide things like the size and weight of the paper used for the receipt, in what languages it will be printed, what would be on it,'' she said. Any such printer would first need to be certified by Florida, as required by law.

''Even if things would happen quickly, I doubt the printers could be available before early next year,'' McCormick said.

Earlier this month, the Florida Senate left the door wide open to equipping electronic voting machines with paper printers, but failed to endorse the equipment.

California and Nevada have embraced paper record technology, but Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, the state's top election official, has expressed reservations. She wants the National Institute for Standards and Technology, charged with developing elections criteria, to make a recommendation on the topic of paper receipts. That is still pending.

''The feasibility of implementing such a system in Miami-Dade in 2004 is highly questionable,'' Kaplan told the election subcommittee. ``At this point, we feel providing a voter paper trail is an ongoing topic we will continue to monitor, and not something we can do right now.''

Also a concern: The cost of installing the printers on the county's 7,200 iVotronics units ranges anywhere from $155 to $1,200 per machine, plus software and refitting, Kaplan said. The total tab could reach $10 million. Miami-Dade already spent $25 million for the touch-screen voting machines to do away with punch-card voting after the 2000 fiasco.

ISSUE NOT MONEY

Money is not the issue, Kaplan said. ''I would never recommend against the implementation of such technology based primarily on fiscal considerations,'' she wrote in her report.

Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, filed suit in federal court demanding that Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and other touch-screen voting counties use paper printers to offer assurances to voters that their ballot has been recorded.

Those counties also looked into offering a paper trail, then abandoned it.

The paper record -- proof of how a person voted via a touch-screen voting machine -- is meant to soothe lingering unease among voters -- born largely after the 2000 presidential election -- that their vote is going uncounted.

The printed ballot would allow voters to verify which candidate or issue they selected, either by looking at the printed ballot from behind a glass, which then drops into a security box, or by issuing a ballot that is then dropped into a box.

Voters would not be allowed to walk away with a copy of their ballot for fear those paper ballots could be sold.

The paper trail also means election workers can audit actual paper.

`VULNERABLE'

Although touch-screen machines cannot be hacked into from the outside because they are not connected to the Internet, Douglas Lewis, executive director of the nonprofit The Election Center, said a paper trail, in a way, makes the machines vulnerable.

''The truth remains that if you want to manipulate any election anywhere in the world, the best way to do it is still with a piece of paper,'' said Lewis, whose group advises elections supervisors nationwide.

CONSTANCE KAPLAN,

Miami-Dade supervisor of elections

Lewis said a voting machine with a paper trail may offer more complications.

``For example, if you get a paper trail, then you have to decide what to do when you have to do a recount. Are you going to recount the electronic vote or the paper vote? That can take a long time. Florida never finished recounting its paper votes in 2000.''

Also at Monday's meeting, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, which agreed the paper receipts are not a viable idea, challenged the accuracy of the voting machines, saying there is a glitch when audits are performed following any election.

''We have a system that has symptomatic problems in the very way it tallies votes,'' Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the group's chairwoman, said.

PROBLEM FIXABLE

Kaplan acknowledged the glitch but said it only affects audits performed days after the election.

''There is new software being approved by Tallahassee that will fix this problem,'' she told the subcommittee.

© 2004 The Miami Herald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

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