State Primary Votes Won't Have Paper Trail

TALLAHASSEE - Despite election reforms that state officials approved last year, most Florida voters will rely this month on the same touch-screen machines that have come under fire nationwide.

That's because election supervisors are still working to implement the 2007 paper-trail legislation, which won't take effect until summer.

With Tuesday's vote looming, even officials who insisted last year on the necessity of paper trails for votes now say they think results from the presidential primary and property tax cut referendum will be accurate. Election watchdogs, however, say the promise of paper ballots later does not eliminate concerns about touch-screen voting now.

"It's a really big transition, and this is the soonest it can be done," said Pam Haengel, president of the Voting Integrity Alliance of Tampa Bay and vice president of the Florida Voters Coalition. "We're between a rock and a hard place. We've never had full confidence in these voting machines."

Gov. Charlie Crist campaigned in 2006 on the need for paper trails and championed the cause throughout last year's legislative session. Asked this week about the touch-screen machines that all but 15 counties will use this month, however, Crist said he was confident in the process.

"You want to make progress as quickly as you can but not too quickly that you might not do it right," he said. "So having it in November the way we really want it to be forever, I think, is prudent."

Lee Constantine, chairman of the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee and a paper-trail ally, said Wednesday that he is not worried about this month's touch-screen voting - in part because there is a limited amount at stake.

"Of course, Proposition 1 is binding, but everything else is not binding," the Altamonte Springs Republican said. "If they have questions about 100 votes here or there, you're not talking about who's going to be, ultimately, the next president."

Still, Haengel said, voters using touch-screens should remain vigilant. Most of all, she said, they should verify all their choices that appear on the machine's summary screen.

Buddy Johnson, elections supervisor for Hillsborough County, said testing of the county's touch-screen machines is ongoing and that voters "should be very confident" in the system.

Bids from companies to provide the county's paper voting machines are due this month.