"They should ban the punch card system in Florida," Sancho said.
"Massachusetts and New Hampshire have banned the punch card
system."

RMNEWS COMMENT:A positive outcome of the election chaos we are living through would be a reform of the way we vote. I wonder which party would be more likely to push this kind of reform.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/daily/detail/0,1136,36000000000127419,00.html

Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
November 15, 2000

180,000 votes for president were invalidated in Florida due to errors

By RAFAEL LORENTE and SEAN HOLTON

WASHINGTON -- While 300 votes have given George W. Bush an

apparent winning edge in Florida, a far larger number -- 180,000
-- cast ballots that simply did not count in the presidential
election.

Many, like voters in Palm Beach County, chose more than one
candidate. Some simply did not vote for president. Other ballots
were ruined by mechanical or human errors.

About 3 percent of Florida's 6.1 million voters in last week's
election did not register a choice for president, up from just
over 2 percent in 1992, according to a Sun-Sentinel survey and
analysis of voting data from all 67 counties. The numbers include
certified data from 64 counties, and the latest tallies from
three counties still in dispute.

"That's just a tremendous amount of ballots," said Pamela
Swafford, the deputy director of elections of Hamilton County,
Ohio, which includes Cincinnati. "To me, that seems like a lot."
Of the 368,000 ballots cast in her county, 6,238 were not counted
in the presidential totals.

Of the Florida ballots that did not register a vote for
president, 85,466 came from counties Bush won and 94,468 from
counties that went for Gore.

Since the 1940s, about 2 percent of ballots nationwide have not
had their presidential vote counted, according to a national
expert. While the overall state percentage is not dramatically
higher, it has increased over the past three presidential
elections, from 2.3 percent in 1992 to 2.5 percent in 1996. But
in some counties, the numbers were very high.

In Duval County, home to Jacksonville, about 9 percent of all
ballots were not included in the presidential tallies, up from
2.3 percent in 1992. Of the 291,626 ballots cast in Duval County,
21,942 ballots had more than one vote for president and 4,967 had
no vote for president. Tiny Gadsden County, where 12.4 percent of
16,812 ballots cast did not have proper presidential votes, had
the highest percentage of voters whose ballots did not count in
the state.

In South Florida's big three counties, whose votes remain
uncertified, 72,914 votes could not be counted for presidential
candidates. In Palm Beach County there were 19,120 "overvotes"
and 10,582 "undervotes," representing 6.4 percent of the 461,988.

Miami-Dade had 17,851 people who voted more than once and 10,750
who did not vote, about 4.4 percent of the 653,963.

In Broward County, 2.5 percent of the county's 588,007 total
votes did not count toward the presidential race, a total of
7,925 and 6,686, respectively.

"Those are way too high," said Ken Brace, president of Election
Data Services Inc., the leading compiler of nationwide, detailed
voting data. Brace said poor ballot design was probably
responsible for the multiple votes.

Since the morning of the election, voters in Palm Beach County
have been complaining, saying the two-page "butterfly" ballot
with punch holes in the middle was confusing. Many have pointed
to the 3,407 votes that Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan got,
the most in the state, as evidence.

Ion Sancho, the supervisor of elections in Leon County, said
punch cards were partly to blame.

"They should ban the punch card system in Florida," Sancho said.
"Massachusetts and New Hampshire have banned the punch card
system. Where else do we have punch card technology in our
society? We don't take tests like that. People should not have to
guess if their vote counts."

The 26 counties with punch-card systems consistently had bigger
problems with people not choosing a candidate in the presidential
race. That suggested that Palm Beach was not the only place
bedeviled by the infamous "chad" that clings to a ballot and
keeps it from being read. On the other hand, a high "overvote" --
meaning more than one candidate was marked for president -- was
more common in 16 counties where ballots are marked with felt-tip
pens and counted centrally.

Brace said that another problem in Florida may have been the
unusually high number of candidates on this year's ballot.
Florida, with 10, was tied with a few other states for most
presidential candidates on the ballot. Florida's voters approved
a constitutional amendment in 1998 making it easier for
independent and minor parties to get on the ballot, and this
year's choices included everything from the Socialist Worker's
Party to the Natural Law Party.

In Duval and DeSoto counties, voters had two pages of
presidential candidates to contend with. It appears many voted
for a candidate on each page.

But Ron Turner, who runs elections in DeSoto, said voters had a
chance to examine a sample ballot before Election Day. Even with
all the candidates, he said, Republicans and Democrats remain in
the first and second position on the ballot and people should
know for whom they're voting before they walk in.

"My personal opinion is, people need to get a grip," he said.
"Ask questions, study your sample ballot and if you have
questions that day, ask. Some of this has to be the voter's
responsibility, not the supervisor's job."

In Leon, Sancho uses a ballot checked at the precinct by the
AccuVote optical scanning system, which immediately spits out
problem ballots. If there is a double-vote, for example, poll
workers inform the voter and they can revote. The result: Leon
County had the lowest rate of uncounted presidential votes in the
state. Out of 103,377 ballots cast, 181 or .175 percent, were
discarded. All were absentee ballots missing signatures or a
witness.

But trends in the Sun-Sentinel's analysis suggest more than voter
apathy was at work. For example, the shortfall in votes was
nearly five times higher in counties where ballots are counted at
a central location instead of at local precincts as in Leon
County. In South Florida's three counties, ballots are shipped to
a central location for tallying and cannot be re-done.

Several election experts said it was difficult to tell why some
people voted twice or not at all.