Harris: Upgrade Voting System
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris will ask the Legislature for $200 million to upgrade state voting systems to electronic models by 2004, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"I want voting systems that will make the will of the voter self-evident," Harris told The Miami Herald.
Under the plan, $50 million would be spent this year to develop an electronic voting system, possibly one that features touch-screen technology. Next year, $100 million would be used to adapt computerized voter registration in every county, produce a prototype and distribute the machines.
Another $50 million would be spent in 2003 to finish distributing and installing the machines, making them ready for the 2004 presidential election.
Harris, the state's chief elections officer, will not submit her plan to the Legislature until after the governor's elections task force has approved its own recommendations on what lawmakers should do to improve vote counting, Division of Elections director Clay Roberts said.
The task force is expected to release a report supporting the temporary statewide use of optical-scanning ballot counters for the 2002 election, a system Harris said should cost around $20 million.
Gov. Jeb Bush, who has proposed spending $30 million this year for election reform, has not seen the Harris proposal, spokeswoman Elizabeth Hirst said Wednesday.
"In general, he is in line with the secretary in believing we ought to move to an elections system in this state that has some minimum standards and an electronic voting system," Hirst said. "There are other questions the governor thinks need to be addressed."
Harris' recommendation is expected to come under fire from the Republican-led lawmakers, who are already reluctant to approve optical-scanning ballots. House Speaker Tom Feeney said voters need to be educated in basic balloting.
"We can go out and spend on my watch $200 million to buy the most updated machinery in the world, but are we really fixing the symptom and not the underlying problem?" Feeney said Tuesday.
Currently, 41 of 67 counties use optically-scanned ballots, which feature candidates' names next to bubbles that can be filled in with ink. Florida would need to lease almost 4,000 such machines to put in precincts around the state.
The push for upgraded voting methods comes in the wake of the Nov. 7 presidential election, in which thousands of punch-card ballots were not counted because they were punched incorrectly. After a month of recounts and court battles, George W. Bush was declared the winner over Al Gore.
Harris said she likes the idea of optical scanners as a temporary fix to Florida's voting problem, but wants a move to electronic voting.
"The interim solution of leasing is good, so long as ... we purchase the kind of technology that will last a long time, that we feel the voter's intention is understood and every vote counts," she said.
