Punch-card vote system is in a
technological hole
BY MARTIN MERZER
mmerzer@herald.com
You charge $5 worth of gasoline and it's posted to your credit card before you
start the engine. You vote for the leader of the Free World and it takes hours -- or
in the current case, days or weeks -- to tabulate your vote, assuming your vote is
tabulated.
In the computer age, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties are still
using manual punch-card systems purchased in the 1970s. They are slow. They
are imprecise. They are intolerant of voter mistakes or confusion, as the world
learned last week.
They also are banned now in New Hampshire and Massachusetts because they
distorted election results there. The Massachusetts Supreme Court reversed the
results of a 1996 Democratic primary after reviewing problems with punch-card
ballots.
Several better systems are gaining widespread acceptance, experts say.
Among them: touch-screen computer voting. It eliminates punch-card ballots that
can confuse voters. It avoids ``hanging chads,'' those shreds of paper that
invalidated thousands of votes in South Florida. It could allow you to vote at any
precinct in your county -- and to read the ballot in nearly any language you prefer.
It also costs a lot of money -- about $3,000 a screen. Broward would need 6,300
screens, a cost of $18.9 million. Miami-Dade would need 6,800 screens, a cost of
$20.4 million.
COST IS DAUNTING
Progress always comes at a price, but numbers like those make election
supervisors and county commissioners turn pale.
``We will be taking a look at what's out there when all of this is through,'' said
David Leahy, Miami-Dade's election supervisor. ``But somebody still would have
to give me money to buy any new system.''
At the same time, experts warn that no system is perfect. Computer screens
require electricity, for instance, and a power blackout on Election Day could be
ruinous. Defeated candidates could challenge the system's software, claiming
fraud or sabotage.
``There's no such thing as a best system,'' said Doug Lewis, executive director of
the Election Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group in Houston that monitors voter
registration and election administration. ``It depends on what you're willing to live
with in advantages and disadvantages.
``If you sent lawyers into any jurisdiction in America, no matter what voting
system is being used, they could find something to pick apart if it were a close
election.''
COMING TO FLORIDA?
Touch-screen voting is not yet certified for use in Florida, but it probably will be
next year, he and other experts said.
About 15 percent of the nation's voters used the system last week. Voters in
Riverside County, Calif., abandoned paper ballots this year and went all-computer.
Very few problems emerged, and the county tabulated its votes nearly three times
faster than in the past.
``It's the wave of the future,'' said Robert Pickett, southeast regional manager for
Global Election Systems, a provider of vote tabulating systems. ``After what we
saw in this election, some people are looking to upgrade their punch-card
systems. We know that already.''
He said the touch-screens' dependence on electricity can be offset with internal
and backup batteries.
In addition, with proper identification, voters could visit any precinct in their county
and a ballot customized for their home precinct would pop up on the screen.
``It also could give you the ballot in any language,'' Pickett said. ``Those kinds of
things are really valuable if you're trying to increase voter turnout. There's really no
comparison to punch cards.''
Election supervisors and other experts have been aware of the limitations of the
punch-card system since at least 1980. During the 1984 general election, for
instance, 137,000 of Ohio's 4.7 million votes were invalidated because the system
confused voters.
Nevertheless, the system is still widely used in Florida and by more than a third
of all Americans. And now, Floridians and millions of other people around the
world are aware of its problems.
According to local election supervisors, 44,896 South Floridians were
disenfranchised last week because they accidentally punched two holes while
voting for president. In Palm Beach County, thousands of others apparently voted
accidentally for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
Those mistakes may cost Gore the White House, but they are not unique to this
election. Leahy and many colleagues say thousands of votes are discarded every
election because of ``overvotes,'' the selection of more than one candidate for an
office.
``People only notice or care about it when it would affect the outcome,'' Leahy
said.
Election supervisors and industry experts are displeased when any vote is tossed
out, though their sympathy is somewhat limited.
VOTERS' ROLE
``It's incumbent on the voter to properly mark their ballot,'' Pickett said. ``You have
to expect the voter to have enough sense to do it right.''
But even if voters punch only one hole, the vote might not be recorded. If the ballot
is not fully punctured, the ``hanging chad'' could prevent machines from recording
the vote. During a recount, some chads might fall off, explaining last week's
ever-changing vote totals.
Punch cards were banned in Massachusetts in 1997, a year after courts reversed
the outcome of a Democratic primary for a congressional seat.
The courts said the loser was actually the winner because many voters had been
unable to fully perforate the ballots. The courts ruled that the voters' ``intent'' was
clearly demonstrated by indentations in the ballots, and that was good enough.
OTHER OPTIONS
Among other systems in use elsewhere:
Optical scanners, which require voters to fill in a box or a circle on a paper
ballot. Then, in most areas, the voter slips the ballot into a scanner that records
the vote. At the end of the day, the scanners transmit each precinct's totals by
modem and telephone to a county collection site.
Fourteen Florida counties use this system, including Monroe, Brevard and Leon.
Nationally, at least 25 percent of the vote is recorded this way.
An advantage: The scanner immediately rejects any ballot on which more than
one candidate was selected for a race. The ballot is destroyed and the voter gets
another chance.
A disadvantage: The ballots must be designed and printed with great precision. If
not, the scanners cannot read them.
Old-fashioned mechanical-lever machines, still used by about 20 percent of the
American electorate, mostly in New York, Louisiana and other areas of the
Northeast and South.
An advantage: They are reliable, rarely breaking down or yielding inaccurate
results.
A disadvantage: They are not made anymore.
Internet voting, employed on a very limited basis, mostly as experiments.
An advantage: It is extremely convenient, allowing people to vote from home or
office. That should enhance voter participation.
A disadvantage: Security and proper identification could pose problems, and
some critics claim it discriminates against low-income voters who might not have
access to the Internet.
SEPARATE PATHS
At any rate, experts say the United States will always have a hodgepodge of voter
systems. Uniformity is hardly in the national character.
``Our founders had such a healthy distrust of anything overcentralized,'' Lewis
said. ``Our elections are run from the bottom up. It's an inefficient system, but it
works extraordinarily well. Usually.'' |
