it is impossible to question voter intent with touchscreen ballots
once upon a time, there was a state in america that had trouble counting its votes. that state was florida. since then, florida has spent millions on new equpiment, public education, media and spin to convince the residents of florida that their toubles with counting votes are over.
the problem, of course, is that in the elections since then, there’s still trouble – enogh trouble that on the order of 1 in 100 votes “were not recorded.”
unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with the word “intent” a lot to discuss this issue.
in february, the florida department of state, division of elections issued this [pdf] formal opinion in response to questions about providing a manual recount of ballots. you can spend some time reading the opinion yourself, but i’ll quote the first page for people who are in a hurry:
Because it is impossible for a voter to overvote or make stray marks on an electronic ballot, the manual recount provisions of section 102.166, Florida Statutes, do not apply and therefore, counties utilizing touchscreen voting systems are not required or authorized to print or review the electronic ballot images of undervotes occurring in a recounted race.
this opinion is redered on the basis that the idea of a recount is to see if there is “clear intent” on the part of the voter that might be unreadable by the machines. it also goes into great detail about the intent of the legislature regarding procedures and timeframes and other such election processes.
importantly, the opinion goes as far as to say that election officials “have no authority” to manually recount votes cast on touchscreen machines.
but why would i bring up an obscure document from a little office in the department of state of florida now? well, partially because i can, and blogs are timeless. there is another reason, of course, and that is that the ap ran a story today, with this statement….
Groups Challenge Florida Ban on Recounts [ap via abc news, july 27, 2004]The Division of Elections then ruled that state law only requires a recount to determine voters’ intent, and that it is impossible to question voter intent with touchscreen ballots.
and that was a very troubling statement to me.
what’s missing, as far as i can tell, is any statement that the “intent” of an election is to count the legitimate ballots of legitimate voters accurately. in other words, i think we’re missing the big picture here.
i could be wrong, of course, elections are terribly inconvenient, inefficient and bothersome events, so there’s a lot to be said for skipping them entirely, or maybe just postponing them until they are more convenient.
