Hillsborough County voters must be getting used to something new every time they show up to cast their ballots. For some reason the people in charge of elections around here have found it necessary almost every voting cycle to go out and spend a few million dollars or so to install voting machines that can guarantee that when you cast a ballot, it will be counted and they can go back and check it out. ...more

November 7, 2008

More than a dozen Hillsborough County elections office workers hunkered down in a glass-walled room in Brandon on Wednesday afternoon and started counting what could add up to about 70,000 ballots that have yet to be tabulated. ...more

November 6, 2008

Hillsborough County's general election outcome is still unknown, and likely won't be finalized until late today. ...more

November 5, 2008

3:49 p.m.: In Pinellas County, six optical scanning machines had to be replaced by noon today, while 439 absentee ballots have had to be discounted thus far because of signature irregularities on the part of the voters, according to a spokeswoman with the Supervisor of Elections Office. ...more

November 4, 2008

1:35 p.m.: There's not a voter in sight at the Ross Norton Recreation & Aquatic Complex-Extreme Sports Park in Clearwater, the designated location for voters from precincts 500 and 501. ...more

November 4, 2008

From the White House and Congress to the East Lake Tarpon Special Fire Control District and the Pasco Mosquito Control District. The votes that will be cast Nov. 4 in those races and the all the ones in between should be counted. If any aren't, however, in most cases the fault will lie with voters, not the equipment being used or the sinister forces some people devoutly believe "stole" recent elections. So be careful when voting with optical scanning voting equipment this Tuesday. ...more

November 1, 2008

We'll take Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson at his word that the problem experienced posting vote tallies there Tuesday night wasn't the fault of the county's still-new optical-scanning voting system. In Pasco and Pinellas, which like Hillsborough and other Florida counties were forced to switch to optical scanning by the Legislatures, things also went fairly well. ...more

August 30, 2008

Having voted in yesterday's primary, I can't believe the state and local governments spent all those millions for the optical-scanning system. The touch-screen was less cumbersome - one machine per booth vs. two booths, paper, pen and folder - and confirmed who you voted for before you "went final." Correcting a mistake on the touch-screen was easy; now you have to go through an error process and do the whole system over. You aren't warned about undervotes at all. ...more

August 27, 2008

The Legislature, with the support of Gov. Charlie Crist, last year forced counties like Pasco and Pinellas to scrap the touch-screen voting equipment they had just spent millions purchasing. Touch-screen voting was supposed to solve problems associated with punch-card balloting, which was supposedly the cause of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential voting controversy in Florida. ...more

February 12, 2008

Former Hillsborough County Commissioner Phyllis Busansky will challenge incumbent Buddy Johnson for the county supervisor of elections post in November. ...more

February 9, 2008