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Watchdog group requests Volusia vote tallies

By CHRISTINE GIRARDIN
Staff Writer

Last update: November 18, 2004


DELAND -- An activist group investigating possible irregularities in the Nov. 2 election requested copies of all Volusia County voter tallies Wednesday.

It took county elections employees most of the day to complete the job, started at the request of Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

The watchdog organization, based in Seattle, is gathering similar records from at least three other counties around Florida -- information that may lead to an election challenge, Harris said.

Harris also wants to examine each ballot from up to 50 precincts in Volusia County, to see whether election totals match voter tallies on polling place tapes.

It is these receipt-like documents that Harris sought copies of Wednesday. However, by 6 p.m., after the office had closed, Harris had not returned to pick up the copies, Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe said.

The documents show a printed record of each ballot fed into 179 optical scanning machines used in the election.

Harris went to the Department of Elections' warehouse on State Road 44 in DeLand on Tuesday to inspect original Nov. 2 polling place tapes, after being given a set of reprints dated Nov. 15. While there, Harris saw Nov. 2 polling place tapes in a garbage bag, heightening her concern about the integrity of voting records.


Lowe confirmed Wednesday some backup copies of tapes from the Nov. 2 election were destined for the shredder. She added that originals were still available for Harris, or anyone else, to see. It is those polling place tapes that were copied and provided Wednesday to Black Box Voting for about $125.

'She's not wanting to listen to an explanation. She has her own ideas," Lowe said of Harris.

Lowe said to provide a backup voting record, she routinely asks poll workers to print two polling place tapes on election night. One tape is delivered in one car along with the ballots and a memory card. The backup tape is delivered to the elections office in a second car. Poll workers sign both copies of the tapes, Lowe said.

Harris said she's concerned the tallies might not match up with voter ballots or the memory cards used in the optical scanning machines. She declined to identify which precinct ballots she wants to examine and what led her to choose those precincts, but said many appear to be in minority-dominated precincts.

"I won't give out everything until I've documented it, and with other sources," said Harris, a long-standing critic of electronic voting systems and author of a book about the role they played in the 2000 election. She said her group is looking at election results nationwide.

Harris said she chose to pull records in Volusia County, in part, due to an Election Office computer glitch in 2000 that subtracted 16,000 votes from Democratic candidate Al Gore.

Lowe said Florida law allows anyone to inspect election ballots, as long as they pay for the time it takes Election Office employees to go through the process. Lowe said she did not know how much that might cost Wednesday because she doesn't know yet which precincts Harris may want examined. Each precinct can have 600 to 3,000 voters, Lowe said.

By the end of business Wednesday, Black Box Voting had not submitted a written request to examine individual ballots.

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