TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Optical-Scan Voting Is No Improvement

ADVERTISEMENT

JOSEPH H. BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 31, 2008

There's a place more magical and elusive than Shangri-la, Narnia and Never-Never Land all rolled into one. You may have heard of this place. You know it as "the next level."

After this football season is over, many coaches will be out of a job because they failed to get their team there.

The next level is where we were supposed to go with the new optical-scan voting machines that made their mass debut during the recent primary election. After voting on Tuesday, I've concluded that we're still not there. In fact, I was very disappointed.

Optical-scan machines are the third change in how ballots are cast since 2000. This is getting to be very expensive to taxpayers during a time of declining state revenues, and I'm not convinced that democracy is enhanced.

Paper-Trail Obsession

There was nothing wrong with touch-screen voting, which we replaced for the opportunity to use ballots with varying designs and smaller print that require special pens rather than a finger. Touch screens also summarized your picks, allowed changes to be made before you finished, and kept you from overvoting. I thought it was near perfect as a voting system can get.

One election, the 2006 midterm congressional election between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings down in Sarasota, destroyed the touch screens' reputation. Buchanan won by 369 votes, but about 18,000 didn't register a vote, thus the votes were considered "lost," and outcries about the need for a "paper trail" were heard.

Critics have also said that the machines are susceptible to fraud. Computer experts showed how it's possible to install a virus that could alter vote counts. So last year Gov. Charlie Crist decided we needed to change voting machines - again.

Here's a fact: People do overvote because they like more than one candidate, and they undervote because they don't like any candidate in a race. That is not going to change, no matter what system is in place.

Not The 'Green' Thing To Do

If the argument against electronic voting machines is that people will tamper with them because of the lack of a paper trail, why are paper ones more trustworthy? What good did paper ballots do in the past? And if this doesn't work out, where do we go from here?

And in these environmentally conscious times, why use more paper?

According to the Palm Beach Post, "In Palm Beach County alone, Tuesday's primary and November's general election will eat up more than 178,400 pounds of paper ballots - that's about 90 tons, or the equivalent in weight of 21 Hummer H2 sport utility vehicles."

Of the 650,739 registered voters in Hillsborough County, only 65,981 - a whopping 10.14 percent - turned out for Tuesday's election - even with a two-week early period preceding it. It wasn't any better in neighboring counties. So until more people decide they want to participate in this democracy of ours, let's hold off on new voting machines.

Because it's voters, not machines, who need to get to the next level.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT