Machine Woes Cast Doubt on Some Elections

This year, nobody's contesting the big ones. The nation will be spared the debacle of hanging chads and senior citizens crying about butterfly ballots. But the move towards fixing our country's election woes with technology has not been smooth sailing.

Over the course of the past few elections, the embattled "Diebold Machine" owners have had to defend themselves across the country, as some machiens were even decertified for unreliability and lack of security. And while problems with the machines this election were not as widespread as expected, some problems appear to have arisen.

Randy Wooten, a candidate for mayor in a small Arkansas town, received zero votes, even though he voted for himself. "I had at least eight or nine people who said they voted for me, so something is wrong with this picture," Wooten said.

If Wooten was cheated by the machines out of the few votes that he'd earned - votes which could make a difference in a close race - he might not be the only one. In an unfolding drama in Tallahassee Florida, Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings is contesting the election, in which the official count has her losing by just 369 votes. Jennings has sued for a new election on the grounds that machines registered that more than 18,000 voters in her district did not register a vote in the congressional contest. This is called an undervote.

It's not unheard of for voters to fail to register a vote for a certain office; sometimes disgust with politicians can lead voters to do just that in protest. But the undervote in Sarasota County was an anomalous 14% of all voters. That's nearly six times higher than the other counties involved in this same race or on Sarasota County's absentee ballots themselves.

Moreover, there were eye-witness accounts of voting problems at the touch-screen machines. Several voters who said they had to revote, sometimes pressing harder on the screen, to cast ballots for Jennings after a review showed their initial attempt failed. Ina Arnell told The Miami Herald that she had to go back three times to get the machine to record her vote for Jennings. ''At the time, I didn't think anything about it,'' she said. ``Now I'm terribly suspicious over that. Why that race?''

The Florida Elections Canvassing Commission has certified Buchanan the winner, but Jennings' suit will cast a pall on any victory parties they might be thinking of throwing. The suit not only demands a new election but also demands a complete inspection of the machines - the same type used in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

"There is a crisis of confidence in these machines,'' said Jennings' lawyer, Kendall Coffey, who represented Al Gore in the disputed 2000 elections. "It is absolutely certain something went terribly, terribly wrong.''

Complaints about the machines are not restricted to the Democratic side of the aisle, either. After the machines failed repeated tests in Maryland, Republican Governor Ehrlich was so dubious about their reliability that he encouraged voters throughout the state to vote by absentee paper ballot. This, in turn, caused an unprecedented number of absentee ballots to be sent out before election day, and nearly resulted in a costly recount in that state.

Even though this past election day seems to have gone off without widespread reporting of voting problems, the fact that abnormalities like these exist undermine the public confidence in their vote, and may yet prompt election reform in this area. One wouldn't be entirely surprised to see Florida return to paper and pencil in the aftermath of their election woes.