TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Hillsborough Vote-Count Meltdown Flowed From Errors

News Channel 8 photo by PETER MASA

An election worker looks over an absentee ballot that was kicked out by the counting machine.

ADVERTISEMENT

By CHRISTIAN M. WADE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2008

Updated: 11/06/2008 08:10 am

TAMPA - Shortly after the polls closed Tuesday night, Hillsborough County elections officials began uploading tens of thousands of ballots from early voting stations.

At the same time, they started uploading ballots cast Tuesday at hundreds of voting precincts.

The decision proved to be disastrous, as the sudden flow of ballots overloaded the optical scan voting system and brought Hillsborough's election night to a grinding halt.

On Wednesday night, more than 24 hours after the polls closed, the elections office had not finished counting the votes, leaving several key races up in the air. Workers are expected to resume counting this morning and hope to be finished sometime Friday.

Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson declined comment, but through his office put out a statement calling the problems "minor" and blaming them on the company that provided the optical scan voting machines.

But comments by his staff and interviews with other counties point to the decision to load the early votes at the same time as Tuesday's votes as the most likely culprit, although the resulting meltdown was the culmination of questionable decisions by Johnson over the past year.

After being instructed by the state to purchase a new voting system with paper ballots, Johnson was slow to get the machines, limiting the time his workers could train and test the machines. Despite Johnson's assurances they were ready, glitches delayed the primary vote in September when voter turnout was light.

When things went wrong Tuesday night, Johnson appeared uninformed. In interviews, he has said he prefers to delegate and leave the details to others. For hours Tuesday, as the events unfolded, he was nowhere to be found at elections headquarters.

It marked another flawed effort for Johnson, and left officials with a canvassing board that oversees election results wondering whether his office was prepared.

"You knew you were going to have the largest turnout since the '30s," said Rose Ferlita, a county commissioner and canvassing board member. "It was inexcusable."

From the first day of early voting on Oct. 20, it was clear the turnout would be historic.

Hillsborough voters stood in long lines across the county for hours to cast ballots for a new president and a host of other contested congressional, state and local races. By Saturday, the last day of early voting, about 146,000, or 20 percent of the county's voters, had cast ballots, easily eclipsing early voting numbers for the 2004 general election. An additional 114,000 voters cast absentee ballots.

Tuesday night, as election supervisors across the state were quickly posting the results of early voting, Hillsborough's elections officials began to fall behind in tabulating votes.

They had not tabulated the early votes separately, before moving on to count Tuesday's vote. That left a crush of votes that stalled the machines and caused the count to be suspended.

Neighboring counties use similar voting systems, but reported few problems. In Pasco and Pinellas counties, officials uploaded the early voter and absentee ballots just before 7 p.m. and had them tabulated before the live results began arriving.

"Honestly, I don't know who wouldn't do that," said Brian Corley, Pasco County's supervisor of elections. "It's basically a standard industry practice." But if you don't understand all the technical stuff involved, you can really get into a lot of trouble."

By 8:45 p.m., when several surrounding counties had reported nearly 90 percent of the election results, only 42 of Hillsborough's 384 precincts had been reported.

At one point, about 150 optical scanners had to be taken to the elections office because election officials were having trouble transmitting voting results electronically.

Compounding the problem were unrelated issues at other precincts. Johnson said heavy turnout and last-minute address changes at a University of South Florida polling station also created problems, causing more backlogs. Several hundred voters were also given only one page of the ballot, when they should have been given two pages.

At about 2:30 a.m., Circuit Judge James Dominguez, chairman of the county's canvassing board, shut down the election office for the night. He noted there were problems with tabulations for 13 early voting machines and trouble accessing recorded votes at two precincts.

Disappointed party officials blamed Johnson's office for the chaos.

"I think there were many things that could have been anticipated to make this run more smoothly," said Pat Kemp, vice chairwoman of the Hillsborough County Democratic Executive Committee. "There could have been better planning and better execution."

Early in 2007, following a disputed congressional race in Sarasota, Gov. Charlie Crist unveiled plans to replace electronic voting machines in the 15 Florida counties that used them with machines that use optical scan paper ballots.

The state Legislature approved the switch to paper-trail voting a few months later. Hillsborough County was one of the last in the state to purchase the machines, spending about $6 million on the new system. Funding came from the state and the county.

At the time, state elections officials wondered whether Johnson had enough time to train poll workers and staff to use the new technology. Johnson assured them the transition would be seamless.

Premier has 16 years of experience in Florida. Thirty-three of Florida's 67 counties use Premier optical scanners, but only two - Hillsborough and Sarasota - use the company's high-speed scanners for counting absentee ballots.

The Texas-based company was formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, a source of controversy through the years, mostly for perceived security flaws in its systems. But Premier had updated its equipment and software and was recertified by the state. It also operated optical-scan machines that produced a paper trail required by Florida law.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning said he stands behind the technology. The problem with Hillsborough's election was, "a voting issue; not a voting system issue," he said. "To my knowledge there are no other counties that had issues with Premier," Browning said. "It was just getting the results modemed from precincts into the central site."

Neighboring counties use similar voting systems, but have reported few problems.

Without elaborating, Premier attributed the problems in Hillsborough to an overload of data that stalled the system.

"It's important to note that all votes were successfully and securely cast and recorded," the company said in a statement. "Premier sincerely regrets any inconvenience and the reporting delays caused by this issue."

On Wednesday night, election officials were tabulating votes from Tuesday's election. They were also counting votes at two precincts where votes were not tabulated Tuesday. About 2,000 ballots were cast at each of the two precincts.

Also left to count today are votes in half of the 26 early voting machines. With about 127,000 early votes cast, that means about 70,000 votes are still left to be counted.

That left several key races, including a Hillsborough County Commission seat and a school board seat, as well as Johnson's slim lead over challenger Phyllis Busansky, unresolved.

Reporters Sherri Ackerman, Keith Morelli, John Allman, Catherine Dolinski, Steven Girardi and

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT