Pattern at Sarasota polls spelled trouble
Poll workers tell of the problems that produced nearly 18,400 nonvotes in the Sarasota congressional race.
BY JACK DOLAN AND MARC CAPUTO
SARASOTA - On the day that would again cement Florida's reputation as ground zero for election oddities, Les-Lee Rowland walked into the polling station where she worked and realized there was serious trouble.
Some voters complained that the touch-screen machines weren't registering votes for Congress, prompting Rowland to shut two down briefly for inspection. And more than a dozen poll workers said voters complained of missing the race entirely due to how it was displayed on the screen -- an issue so serious that Sarasota County elections chief Kathy Dent had pointed it out three days earlier in an e-mail to poll workers handling early voting.
Dent headlined her note: ``CRITICAL.''
On Election Day, Dent's office reinforced the point by calling each of the 156 precincts to remind poll workers to let every voter know the ballot design made it easy to miss the congressional race.
By then, it was apparently too late.
The result: 18,382 nonvotes in the race, a looming recount because of the tiny vote margin between winner and loser, and renewed criticism of the iVotronic voting machines -- the same type used in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
Some of the criticism might be blunted if people didn't vote simply because they didn't notice the race. And it would hurt Democrat Christine Jennings, who won only Sarasota in the five-county congressional district.
The touch-screen machines are programmed so that if a voter doesn't make a choice in a given contest, they will say the voter intended to skip the race. Thus Jennings may lose the recount to Republican Vern Buchanan, who leads by 373 votes. The recount starts Monday and will take three days.
TOUCH DIDN'T REGISTER
But Rowland, other poll workers and voters say more than bad ballot design was involved. She said some people had such trouble getting the screen to register their votes that she devised other techniques for ballot casting.
''I was telling people to use their knuckles,'' she said.
She said she then turned the machines off and called technicians to check them out. When the machines were turned on again after 40 minutes, she said, the technicians gave her a frustrating explanation:
''They have to really press down hard. They're not pressing hard enough,'' she said the technician told her.
At another precinct on Election Day, poll worker Marie Glidewell said she had to repeatedly push the screen to activate the ballot page.
Glidewell said Dent made available in each polling station an editorial for voters that touted the soundness of touch-screen voting machines. On the ballot that day was a proposed county charter amendment, which easily passed, calling for paper ballots.
State and county elections officials, as well as manufacturer Election Systems & Software, say the machines weren't broken. Jennings' legal team isn't sure and says it may sue after the recount.
Interviews with more than a dozen Sarasota County poll workers and precinct clerks on Friday revealed a consistent pattern of complaints about the visibility of the U.S. House race. The U.S. Senate race was listed on the first of the electronic ballot's 15 pages. At the top of page 2 came the congressional race, listed just above the governor's race, a higher-profile election.
Still, the House election was one of the most contested in the nation, one of the costliest and one of the nastiest -- so much so that Dent herself said she, like many voters, skipped it intentionally. She attributed the other undervotes to voter error, adding during a press conference Wednesday: ``I do not know what to attribute it completely to.''
At the same press conference, she made scant mention of the ballot design but acknowledged a higher undervote rate than in other races. The rate: 13 percent in the House race, compared to 1 percent in the governor and Senate races.
During early voting the week before Election Day, Dent's office was beset with complaints from voters who said they couldn't find the race. Others said they cast votes, but noticed during their review that no mark was recorded in the congressional race.
Dent then wrote her ''CRITICAL'' e-mail telling poll workers: ''SOME VOTERS ARE OVERLOOKING THE BUCHANAN/JENNINGS RACE UNTIL THEY GET TO THE REVIEW SCREEN.'' She then told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that she didn't expect a big undervote rate in the early voting.
OVERLOOKED CONTEST
It turns out the early voting had the highest undervote rate: 18 percent. Absentee voters, who used paper ballots, undervoted less than 3 percent of the time.
Sarasota voter Nancy Rutledge was among those who noticed she had apparently overlooked the race on the electronic ballot. ''It just took up very little space,'' she said. ``My eyes went immediately to the list for the governor's race.''
Rutledge said she voted around 3 p.m. when the precinct was pretty quiet, but nobody warned her that the race would be easy to miss.
The problem ''was definitely the place on the ballot,'' said Adeline Silverman, a veteran poll worker who said she generally finds the touch-screen machines very reliable. ``People just seemed to overlook it, even though we told them to look at it.''
Some poll workers, however, say there was nothing confusing about the ballot, and echo Dent's claim people deliberately refrained from voting in the race due to the intensely negative campaign.
''I do not believe the placement of the 13th Congressional [District] race was confusing for voters,'' said Vicki Cather, assistant clerk at a North Port polling station. ``I made sure that this was explained to all voters.''
Nevertheless, Cather's precinct had a 24 percent undervote, among the highest in the county.
At poll worker Frank Hodalski's precinct, the undervote rate was 10 percent. He said voters were informed about how to handle the machines. But there was only so much instruction needed.
''You can operate these machines if you only have three or four brain cells, they're so easy,'' said Hodalski, 71. ``Some of these stories remind me of the joke of the little old lady who couldn't figure out how to vote -- but she could manage 30 bingo cards at one time.''