USEFUL LINKS ELECTRONIC MISCOUNTS, VOTES LOST PERVASIVE SECURITY FLAWS CENTER FOR VOTING & DEMOCRACY RELATED STORIES 1 November: 3 FL counties deny access to int'l vote monitors... 27 October: candidates in tie, at 47.8%... 6 October: GOP in Michigan threatens to arrest Michael Moore...

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The state of Florida is still struggling to overcome its mercilessly complex and disorganized voting system, which failed in 2000, leading to the Supreme Court's intervention in the vote count and effective deciding of the Electoral College vote. That system has continued to be plagued by problems ranging from confusing ballots, to law-abiding voters being wrongfully "purged" when their names appear on lists of convicted felons stripped of the right to vote, to accusations of deliberate election fraud.

During the last month, international observers, election experts invited by Democrats and by independent organizations to monitor the integrity of the November elections, reported that Florida's electoral system would not be prepared to produce a legitimate or fair democratic election on 2 November 2004. The major complaint was related to touchscreen voting machines (an issue first reported by SentidoNews on 29 January 2004), which are designed to record the count as votes are cast, but produce only that single electronic count, with no reliable means of reviewing the votes cast, and no way whatsoever of conducting a legally required manual recount, in case of a disputed count, like the one in 2000.

Now, the BBC reports that Florida's Broward County board of elections has called in partisan volunteers to stuff envelopes and send out absentee ballots, because thousands of voters have not received the ballots they requested. The state (which has not provided an explanation) somehow neglected to dispense these ballots, though it is legally required to do so.

Envelope stuffing reportedly went on all of Thursday night and into Friday, as political activists sought to aid the beleaguered county workers in mailing the needed ballots. A crowd nearby chanted "The whole world is watching". Director Michael Moore was present, and has voiced his concern over the integrity of the process in Florida, under the stewardship of the president's brother. The mayor of Fort Lauderdale accused Moore of being "in bed with terrorists" for his concern over the electoral process, and political tensions are said to be running high across the state, which obviously hopes to avoid a spotlight like the one set on it by history in November of 2000.

MORE THAN HALF OF FLORIDA VOTERS DENIED VERIFIABLE BALLOTS
5 September 2004

15 counties in Florida, which include more than half of the state's registered voters, will use touchscreen voting machines which produce no paper trail and allow the voter no verification that their vote was cast accurately. Anecdotal reports suggest voters are turning to absentee ballots in order to secure the right to a paper ballot and to recountability. An estimated 48 to 60 million voters nationwide will cast votes on machines that offer no verifiable or recountable paper trail. [For more: ABC]

FLORIDA'S LOST & FOUND ELECTRONIC VOTES
31 July 2004

The Supervisor of Elections for Miami-Dade County, Florida, announced Friday that her office had recovered missing electronic records of touch-screen votes from the 2002 primary elections in the race for Florida Governor. The records had been reported lost, after a series of computer crashes appeared to have wiped out the electronic files containing the record of the votes. [Full Story]

FLORIDA "PURGE" LIST AGAIN TARGETS LEGAL VOTERS
5 July 2004

The Miami Herald is reporting that the latest list of felons the Florida state government is requesting local elections officials "purge" from lists of registered voters contains more than 2,000 names of people who are legally eligible to vote. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, various investigators found that the Florida government had unlawfully denied legal voters access to the polls, through a similar process. A series of Salon articles by award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast detail the research behind the specific numbers.

Errors in the "matching" of voters' names to lists of felons came in waves: first it was found that at least 7,000 innocent voters had their names unjustly erased from registration rolls. Then, another 2,834 eligible voters were "purged" by the state's elections officials. Further investigations showed yet another 7,000 innocent citizens stripped of voting rights due to error-filled purge lists. And finally, and most impressively, Palast reported that a fourth group of at least 40,000 names were erroneously listed as matching felons who had been legally deprived of voting rights. [Full Article]