Voting troubles may not be over in Fla., elsewhere

[UpInArms]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/issues/2004-07-08-votemess_x.htm

WASHINGTON — The nation may never see another butterfly ballot or hanging chad from Florida, but the Sunshine State still hasn't fixed its voting system.

That could mean big trouble again if the Nov. 2 presidential election is as close as it was in 2000, as many anticipate it will be.

Two factors that made the 2000 vote recount so controversial — the confusing butterfly ballots and faulty punch-card voting systems — have been eliminated.

Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties now have new touch- screen voting machines. The rest will use optical scanning devices. Both methods are considered more reliable than the old punch-card system, but they aren't without problems.

A programming error in an optical scanning machine caused an erroneous result in Florida's presidential primary election earlier this year.

...more...

[Bushfire]

1. Lawsuit brought on by FL chapter of ACLU, and Common Cause.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Voting rights groups (ACLU of FL & Common Cause) sued Florida election administrators on Wednesday to overturn a rule that prohibits manual recounting of ballots cast with touch-screen machines, a lawsuit with echoes of the state's disputed 2000 presidential election voting.

The lawsuit said the rule was "illogical" and rested on the questionable assumption that electronic voting machines perform flawlessly 100 percent of the time. It also said the rule violated a Florida law that expressly requires manual recounts of certain ballots if the margin in an election is less than 0.25 percent of the votes cast.

<snip>

Fifteen Florida counties containing about half the state's population use electronic touch-screen voting machines. They include the three most populous counties -- Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach -- that were at the heart of the 2000 punch card ballot recount battle.

<snip>

Audit tests using the new touch-screen machines last year showed some of the data recorded on the Miami-Dade machines were not transferred to electronic logs that would need to be reviewed in a recount.

more...

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5611409&pageNumber=0

I believe congressman Wexlers' lawsuit was dismissed against Jeb in FL, but this was filed Wednesday.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Hanging chads, how they hurt us, excuse the pun

WASHINGTON — The nation may never see another butterfly ballot or hanging chad from Florida, but the Sunshine State still hasn't fixed its voting system.<<

Why would you want to "fix" something that you had already "fixed" and had served you so very very well?

Wooo Hoooo

[tlcandie]

3. In fact, I would be so bold as to state that the Sunshine State's

voting system will never seen the sun!

[Parche]

4. votes

They had 4 "Cheney" years to fix this, and look what they have not done.