Can O.C. Count on Its Vote Tally?

Public officials responsible for vote-tallying systems in communities across the nation, including Orange County, have to be viewing the ballot-counting controversy in Florida as instructive.

They surely realize that there is no perfect vote-counting system, or election, and that what has happened in several counties in Florida could just as easily have happened here, given the historical fact that Orange County is usually counted on by Republicans to deliver GOP margins that could determine statewide races.

Is Orange County’s 15-year-old tallying system, which--like that in Florida’s Palm Beach County--uses punch cards, with their possibly troublesome chads, up to a similar challenge?

Voting mix-ups and slow counts and recounts have been a familiar part of ballot counting here since the county abandoned hand counting and those massive “bedsheet” paper ballots in 1964 for electronic vote tallying.

That system, using marking pens, had its glitches and was one of the slowest in the state, but the county stuck with it for 16 years. In 1980, supervisors made a disastrous switch to a new computerized system that caused a four-day delay in producing official results, setting a state record for slowness. That led to a state investigation of the system and a threat by state officials to shut it down.

The county scrapped that counting machinery in 1985 for the current punch-card ballot, which some experts now contend is proving to be the least reliable of the systems commonly in use. The newest approach is Riverside County’s $13-million touch-screen voting machine that works like the familiar bank ATMs and saves millions in ballot printing and personnel costs.

Vote-tallying systems must be accurate above all. They also should be secure, fast and economical. Another requirement some election officials insist on is that any system contain a paper trail, some paper source to enable a hand recount of disputed results.

If the confusion in Florida has any positive side, it is the raised awareness it has prompted of the need to ensure accurate counts in the first place.

County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who explores new technologies for the board, has scheduled a public hearing on Dec. 12 to review the county’s counting process. He has asked the county CEO and voting chief to present verbal reports on the state of the county election process at that session, in addition to accepting public comment. Spitzer says he hopes it all will lead to new technologies for county vote tallying.

That’s a worthy goal. Voting systems should meet the same test as officeholders: If they can’t continue to perform, they should be replaced. Election-day suspense should be centered on who is going to win, not on whether the vote-counting system will work.