Here is the text of the bill just approved by the Florida Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections:
http://www.flsenate.gov/cgi-bin/view_page.pl?Tab=session&Submenu=1&FT=D&File=session/2007/Senate/bills/amendments_com/html/sb0960am322622.htmlThe bill has to go through more Senate committees, and then there's the House to reconcile with (the House is working on a bill, HB213, that has some major differences), with the House Speaker being one of the obstacles for enactment. However, the Senate bill reflects Gov. Crist's latest proposals and therefore seems to be in a stronger position than the House alternative.
Highlights:
- Requires replacement of touchscreen DREs with optical scan paper ballots.
- Permits counties to use ballot-on-demand technology to solve the problems that stem from combining optical scan paper ballots with early voting.
- Provides state funding for both the optical scanners and the ballot-on-demand systems and gives the state the authority to negotiate and purchase those systems on behalf of the affected counties.
- Requires counties to perform an audit of from 1 to 2 percent of the precincts.
- Specifies that the audit must be a public manual count of the paper ballots.
- Includes election-day, absentee, early voting, provisional, and overseas ballots in the audit.
Lowlights:
- Retains touchscreen DREs for disability access.
- Attaches no consequences or next steps for a failed audit, other than reports and recommendations for correction in future elections.
- Audits only the top race on the ballot.
- Uses a fixed (1 to 2) percentage for the audit rather than a percentage that varies to deliver statistical significance.
- Leaves in place the rules saying that recounts are machine counts and prohibiting counties from doing manual recounts.
- Reduces the number of forms of ID that can be used to vote.
- Requires that complaints "must be based upon personal information or information other than hearsay" in order for the Florida Election Commission to investigate them.
The last two lowlights are steps backward. Other than those, the provisions of the bill are all steps that are beneficial to election reform but still leave major problems yet to be solved. Given those facts, I am in favor of its passage -- even as is -- but would rather see the ID and complaint changes taken out (unlikely to happen IMO) and, especially, something be done about the lack of consequences upon a failed audit and the fact that existing recount provisions use machine counts and prohibit manual counts.
I'm not sure whether Florida law still says that recounts shall include only undervotes and overvotes. If so then that is another thing that remains to be fixed.
Bonus: here's a Miami Herald article about the bill and related developments:
http://www.miamiherald.com/775/v-print/story/77384.html#