Broward vote tally delays raise fears about Nov. 4 election

[Freddie Stubbs]

By DAN CHRISTENSEN, AMY SHERMAN AND BREANNE GILPATRICK

Worry that South Florida could once again keep the nation waiting to see who captures the Oval Office resurfaced Wednesday when Broward County officials took 21 hours to count all the precincts from Tuesday's woefully light primary.

The delay not only kept three hot-button races in limbo for nearly a day, it instantly rekindled memories of 2000, when hanging chads and ballot problems in Palm Beach County kept the nation on edge in Bush v. Gore.

This November, the heavily Democratic Broward County is expected to turn out in droves for nominee Barack Obama.

''Based on what you're seeing now, it's a good bet it will take even longer to count the ballots in November,'' said County Commissioner John Rodstrom, who didn't find out until late Wednesday afternoon that he had edged Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Carlton Moore by 144 votes.

more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/v-print/story/661821.html

[O.M.B.inOhio]

1. Article assumes that instant results are good and necessary.

They're good for the thrill of the horse race and network ratings, but do they serve democracy? WHat if each polling place counted ballots by hand, under public scrutiny, a great civic event; then communities submitted their results to their counties or secretaries of state, publicly and open to independent verification; then states announced their results after all credible claims of error or fraud have been satisfied? A week long event. Maybe that would be a more thrilling horse race still.

[tbyg52]

2. I don't care how long it takes, within reason

The problem with 2000 was not how long it took; it was that it was first disrupted and then halted.

[FatDave]

4. I'm not sure, but I think....

...that you just described the Canadian election system.

[eridani]

7. Not entirely

Canadians do handcounts for national elections only if there are no competing local elections. When that happens, Vancouver BC uses opscan (according to a WA state elections worker, anyway).

[mzmolly]

3. What kind of machines do they have in Florida these days?

I hope they have a paper trail?

[kcass1954]

5. Each county's SOE makes their own decision on which specific equipment to use.

In Broward, we now have paper ballots with optical scanners. I'm not convinced that's any better than the touch-screens they just got rid of.

[mzmolly]

6. We have optiscan in my county as well and I have to say

they've been efficient and accurate. And most of all, you have a paper trail.

[diva77]

9. have you heard of the "Hursti Hack" ...we cannot afford to have a false sense of

security with optiscans. Please refer to excerpt below:

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=798&Itemid=51

snip

The Significance of Harri's Hack

First of all, the Hursti hack reveals only one vulnerability in an almost unlimited number of potential flaws or vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems (both op-scans and DREs). However, the Hursti hack is individually significant because the flaw it exposed is a planned vulnerability in the system, not something that is accidentally there. It had to be PUT there (programmed) on purpose. For Diebold to claim innocence about this would be absurd. It would be like saying you didn't know your garage had a door while you were standing there holding the garage door opener. Or, because this security vulnerability is so huge, it would more accurately be like saying you didn't know your house had a garage at all!!

Since something like 95% of computer scientists agree that electronic voting machines (op-scans and DREs) have an almost infinite number of potential flaws or vulnerabilities, the Hursti hack shows, above all, THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING PAPER BALLOTS for an independent confirmation of machine results. The beauty of paper ballots is that they are completely independent of any machine, unlike the printer paper trail. Therefore, they provide a true independent, manual audit of machine results.

snip
----------
IMHO, I don't even think there should be a manual audit of machine results -- in CA, elections officials always try to match machine results; better to have a manual audit of manual results

[eomer]

8. Paper trail is now required throughout Florida. However,

in addition to that law change, they also changed the recount rules such that the paper trail is very unlikely to be looked at in any meaningful way. Recounts will be done by running the paper through optical scanners, not by hand. And the required audit is very weak: a 1% recount of only a single race, randomly selected in each county. Edit to add: and the audit is not done until after the certification, and the only consequence of a failed audit is a report that is geared toward improving future elections, not toward correcting miscounts in the audited one. The only scenario in which the paper trail is of any significant value is if an election contest is filed. Or, I should say, I assume it would be of use in that scenario. On the other hand, maybe they have a plan in place that will allow them to avoid looking at the paper in that scenario too.