Those concerns have been fueled by an otherwise obscure local judge’s race. County Circuit Judge Richard Wennet faced a strong challenge from William Abramson, a local criminal lawyer, last month. When the ballots were counted, Abramson led by 17 votes out of more than 102,000. An automatic recount was conducted, which put Wennet ahead by 60 votes. But this time, about 3,500 ballots were missing. The state elections board refused to accept the result. Off to court they went. A state judge ordered another tally. No result was announced because, while the missing 3,500 votes were found in a warehouse, a fresh batch of 159 that were counted the first time could not be read. Another machine recount was conducted Tuesday. It said Abramson won, but the machines kicked out 160 ballots they could not read. After those were counted by hand, the county canvassing board declared Abramson the winner. However, Wennet said he might continue the fight. This back-and-forth has some fearing far worse in November.
The punch cards are gone. Security cameras monitor all activity in every county election office. Random spot-checks review each ballot in 2 percent of all precincts. But the “improved” system may not be much better than the old one. “There’s a lot of improvement needed here and throughout the state of Florida,” said Judge Barry Cohen, chairman of the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board.
For example, to ensure that each voter is properly qualified to vote, the state imposed stringent ID requirements. The rules say a voter’s driver’s license or approved alternative identification must match up exactly with the voter database. Two problems: Some driver’s licenses have typos. And the voter rolls have never been proofread for errors. “Requiring to be matched up perfectly to databases which have never been tested for accuracy is simply a prescription to have people disenfranchised,” said Ion Sancho, elections supervisor in Leon County, the location of the state capital, Tallahassee.
Or take the new ballots, which are read by optical scanners. The rules are simple but precise: Voters must blacken in the space between the head of an arrow and a rectangular base beside their preferred candidate’s name, creating a whole arrow by connecting them. But some voters didn’t understand the directions. So far, election officials say, many ballots have been rendered unreadable by voters who wrote in X’s, checks, boxes, stars or dots. One voter kissed the ballot and made her mark with lipstick.
Having learned its lesson in 2000, the Democratic Party is taking no chances. Obama’s campaign has an unprecedentedly large staff in Florida — 350 paid workers in 50 offices running the length and breadth of the state, more than four times the size of McCain’s operation. Obama said that given the difficulties in Palm Beach County, he planned to station a team of election lawyers in the state. “I’m not going to anticipate a problem,” Obama said Saturday at a rally in Jacksonville. “I’m just going to prepare for a problem by making sure that we’ve got lawyers in precincts all across the state." “We are going to make sure the election is run the way it’s supposed to be run,” he said. “The state Democratic Party has registered 300,000 new voters this year alone, but will their votes be counted?”
Thanks to: Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Kerry Sanders is a correspondent for NBC News. NBC News political director Chuck Todd and NBC affiliates WJHG of Panama City, Fla., and WPTV of West Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this report.
How is your state doing with voting machine problems?
Michael H. Drucker
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