QUOTE
Protesters demand security in elections
By Jeff Burlew
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Originally published April 19, 2006
Advocates for fair elections gathered Tuesday at the Capitol to press legislators to support bills that would require paper trails and election audits before voters go to the polls this year.
Frederick Simmons, a political science student at Florida A&M University, went to the rally after seeing a flier on campus. He said he's worried that his vote isn't protected.
"Voters should feel that their vote is going to be counted no matter what," he said.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho participated in the event along with People for the American Way and the Florida Fair Elections Coalition. The rally attracted a few dozen people. Using the theme, "Don't Gamble with Our Vote," they said Nevada does a better job of protecting gamblers than Florida does protecting voters.
"A vote for president should be at least as secure as a 25-cent bet in Las Vegas," Sancho said, quoting a New York Times editorial.
Last year, legislators rewrote Florida election laws so that they don't allow manual recounts of machine-read ballots, Sancho said. The statutes state that in close elections, the only ballots that can be manually recounted are ones where the voter didn't make a selection in every race or voted more than once in a given race or ballot question.
Susan Pynchon, director of the Fair Elections Coalition, said Florida is in a voting crisis.
"We vote on secret software," she said. "Our elections are run by private voting machine vendors. Our supervisors of elections are afraid to speak up regarding systems that many of them know to be faulty."
Last year, Sancho and Pynchon, along with the group Black Box Voting, conducted tests of Leon County's Diebold system and found that memory cards could be manipulated from within the elections office so that results could be changed. Later, Diebold and the two other vendors certified to sell election equipment in Florida opted against doing business with Sancho. Recently, Diebold reversed its decision and agreed to sell to Sancho.
By Jeff Burlew
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Originally published April 19, 2006
Advocates for fair elections gathered Tuesday at the Capitol to press legislators to support bills that would require paper trails and election audits before voters go to the polls this year.
Frederick Simmons, a political science student at Florida A&M University, went to the rally after seeing a flier on campus. He said he's worried that his vote isn't protected.
"Voters should feel that their vote is going to be counted no matter what," he said.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho participated in the event along with People for the American Way and the Florida Fair Elections Coalition. The rally attracted a few dozen people. Using the theme, "Don't Gamble with Our Vote," they said Nevada does a better job of protecting gamblers than Florida does protecting voters.
"A vote for president should be at least as secure as a 25-cent bet in Las Vegas," Sancho said, quoting a New York Times editorial.
Last year, legislators rewrote Florida election laws so that they don't allow manual recounts of machine-read ballots, Sancho said. The statutes state that in close elections, the only ballots that can be manually recounted are ones where the voter didn't make a selection in every race or voted more than once in a given race or ballot question.
Susan Pynchon, director of the Fair Elections Coalition, said Florida is in a voting crisis.
"We vote on secret software," she said. "Our elections are run by private voting machine vendors. Our supervisors of elections are afraid to speak up regarding systems that many of them know to be faulty."
Last year, Sancho and Pynchon, along with the group Black Box Voting, conducted tests of Leon County's Diebold system and found that memory cards could be manipulated from within the elections office so that results could be changed. Later, Diebold and the two other vendors certified to sell election equipment in Florida opted against doing business with Sancho. Recently, Diebold reversed its decision and agreed to sell to Sancho.
And here I thought I was on everyone's mailing list. I could have at least gotten SonPie to show up, as he is in Tally. I will be getting in touch with the Florida Fair Elections Coalition.