Analysis reveals flaws in voting by touch-screen

Jeremy Milarsky and Buddy Nevins - Staff Writers
July 11 2004

Florida's relatively new touch-screen voting machines, touted as a solution to the state's 2000 presidential election meltdown, didn't perform as well as machines that use an older technology during a statewide election earlier this year, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis.

Records from the March 9 Democratic presidential primary show that votes were not recorded for one out of 100 voters using the new ATM-style machines. That's at least eight times more than the number of flawed votes cast in the same election with pencil marks on paper ballots tallied by an optical scanner.

[...] If the March undervote rate repeats in the November presidential election and the turnout is the same as in 2000, Broward and Palm Beach counties alone could generate 7,800 flawed votes, a number that worries political leaders who remember the 537 votes by which George W. Bush beat Al Gore.

"That's frightening," Broward County Democratic Party Chairman Mitch Ceasar said. "I thought these machines would correct the incredible situation we had four years ago. I'm angry and disturbed."

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