Florida Senate backs new voting machines

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Fri, Mar. 30, 2007
Florida Senate backs new voting machines
The Florida Senate has signaled its support to buy new opti-scan voting machines across the state for $35 million. The House, meanwhile, has kept silent on the plan.
BY MARC CAPUTO
[e-mail]

TALLAHASSEE -- Nearly a month after the state Legislature gave a whoop-filled standing ovation to Gov. Charlie Crist's call for paper-trail voting machines, the state Senate has decided to make good on the idea to spend about $35 million for it all.

Under the plan, the state would pay to replace ATM-style touch-screen voting machines with paper ballot-reading optical-scan machines in every precinct. The biggest winners: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, the largest of the 15 counties with touch-screens, whose accuracy has been doubted by many in numerous elections across the state.

''A lot of people don't think their votes count. Millions of people in the state of Florida doubt whether or not their vote was recorded or not. And we need to do something about it,'' Sen. Alex Villalobos, a Miami Republican and co-sponsor of the bill, said Thursday. He said the state should pay for the machines, even though it's a tight budget year.
(snip)

House Speaker Marco Rubio, a West Miami Republican pushing a plan to cut back on local property taxes, has said he's not sure if the state should help counties pay for new voting machines. 'Should we spend $30 million of Florida taxpayers' money to pay for new machines for counties that decided to go in that direction? What does that say to the counties that made the optical-scan decision?'' asked Rubio. He pointed out that touch-screen counties decided to listen to lobbyists who persuaded them not to buy optical-scan equipment, even though a governor's task force recommended opti-scan in the wake of the botched punch-card ballots of the 2000 elections.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/57673.html

[Up2Late]

1. Well... At least a few American are getting their vote back...

...here in Georgia, the idea of replacing our Rigged machines is still only a pipe-dream.:(

[Hugin]

2. I'd say this is a step in the correct direction...

However, they must also make provisions for a hand count of the ballots in
close elections with the results of the later count taking priority over the
machine count in any disputes.

Patience being the virtue in determining election outcomes.

[Orangepeel]

3. currently, in FL counties with optiscan ballots, the hand count is the one that matters

The paper ballots are the official ballots and the machines just count them. So that's good.

I've watched recounts of optiscan ballots in Florida -- they are done by a panel of judges and observed by party representatives. I think it would be really risky to screw with the vote totals because there is always a strong likelihood that SOME race will be recounted -- State House or whatever -- and the ballots with all the races marked are then visible while that race is counted.

[Hugin]

4. Very good!

:D

We should never turn our human democracy over to machines. (Sounds like something
Arthur C. Clark or Isaac Asimov might say... :rofl: ,but, it's true.)

[fshrink]

5. Tax payer money.

Yes! Who cares that voting machines are one-arm bandits as long as it's a matter of County budgeting? Politic is already a show, let's turn it into a "casino", as Italians say.

[Acadia Blue]

6. I hope this works for an honest election. About time the pigs

stop stealing America's future.