[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 35 (Thursday, March 18, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E403-E404]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FLORIDA AS THE NEXT FLORIDA

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CORRINE BROWN

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 18, 2004

  Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for 
the Record.

                      Florida as the Next Florida

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 14, 2004]

       As Floridians went to the polls last Tuesday, Glenda Hood, 
     Katherine Harris's successor as secretary of state, assured 
     the Nation that Florida's voting system would not break down 
     this year the way it did in 2000. Florida now has ``the very 
     best'' technology available, she declared on CNN. ``And I do 
     feel that it's a great disservice to create the feeling that 
     there's a problem when there is not.'' Hours later, results 
     in Bay County showed that with more than 60 percent of 
     precincts reporting, Richard Gephardt, who long before had 
     pulled out of the presidential race, was beating John Kerry 
     by two to one. ``I'm devastated,'' the county's top election 
     official said, promising a recount of his county's 19,000 
     votes.
       Four years after Florida made a mockery of American 
     elections, there is every reason to believe it could happen 
     again. This time, the problems will most likely be with the 
     electronic voting that has replaced chad-producing punch 
     cards. Some counties, including Bay County, use paper ballots 
     that are fed into an optical scanner, so a recount is 
     possible if there are questions. But 15 Florida counties, 
     including Palm Beach, home of the infamous ``butterfly 
     ballot,'' have adopted touch-screen machines that do not 
     produce a paper record. If anything goes wrong in these 
     counties in November, we will be in bad shape.
       Florida's official line is that its machines are so 
     carefully tested, nothing can go wrong. But things already 
     have gone wrong. In a January election in Palm Beach and 
     Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the 
     machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply 
     not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote, 
     in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-
     up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a 
     paper record, there was nothing to recount.
       In 2002, in the primary race for governor between Janet 
     Reno and Bill McBride, electronic voting problems were so 
     widespread they cast doubt on the outcome. Many Miami-Dade 
     County votes were not counted on election night because 
     machines were shut down improperly. One precinct with over 
     1,000 eligible voters recorded no votes, despite a 33 percent 
     turnout statewide. Election workers spent days hunting for 
     lost votes, while Floridians waited, in an uncomfortable 
     replay of 2000, to see whether Mr. McBride's victory margin, 
     which had dwindled to less than 10,000, would hold up.
       This past Tuesday, even though turnout was minimal, there 
     were problems. Voters were wrongly given computer cards that 
     let them vote only on local issues, not in the presidential 
     primary. Machines did not work. And there were, no doubt, 
     other mishaps that did not come to light because of the 
     stunning lack of transparency around voting in the State. 
     When a Times editorial writer dropped in on one Palm Beach 
     precinct where there were reports of malfunctioning machines, 
     county officials called the police to remove him.
       The biggest danger of electronic voting, however, cannot be 
     seen from the outside. Computer scientists warn that votes, 
     and whole elections, can be stolen by rigging the code that 
     runs the machines. The only defense is a paper record of 
     every vote cast, a ``voter-verified paper trail,'' which can 
     be counted if the machines' tallies are suspect. Given its 
     history, Florida should be a leader in requiring paper 
     trails. But election officials, including Theresa LePore, the 
     Palm Beach County elections supervisor who was responsible 
     for the butterfly ballot, have refused to put them in 
     place.
       Last week, Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida 
     Democrat, filed a Federal lawsuit to require paper trails. He 
     relies on the Supreme Court's holding in Bush v. Gore that 
     equal protection requires States to use comparable recount 
     methods from county to county. Florida law currently requires 
     a hand recount in close races. That is possible in most 
     counties, but the 15 that use electronic voting machines do 
     not produce paper records that can be recounted. Under the 
     logic of Bush v. Gore, Representative Wexler is right.

[[Page E404]]

       After the 2000 mess, Americans were assured they would not 
     have to live through such a flawed election again. But 
     Florida has put in place a system, electronic voting without 
     a paper trail, that threatens once more to produce an outcome 
     that cannot be trusted. There is still time before the 
     November vote to put printers in place in the 15 Florida 
     counties that use touch screens. As we learned 4 years ago, 
     once the election has been held on bad equipment, it is too 
     late to make it right.

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