No ‘Florida’ Here

It’s not that our chads are any smarter than Florida’s, but the Florida voting fiasco could not have happened in California, or so says Secretary of State Bill Jones, the chief elections officer. California has been a leader in modernizing and standardizing election procedures in recent years, Jones points out.

The troubles in Florida went far beyond hanging or dimpled chads, those cardboard bits that are punched out when a voter makes a choice and stabs the ballot with a stylus. A major problem there was the lack of a standard statewide system for counting and recounting ballots.

California has such a procedure, developed by agreement among county registrars of voters and local elections chiefs. One provision specifies exactly which ballots with so-called hanging chads should be tallied in a recount. Jones has proposed that some of these standards be written into state law, one of 10 reforms he has sent to the Legislature.

Although human mistakes are to blame more often than not, some types of voting machines are more prone to error than others. Jones and other elections officials are excited about new technology in voting machines, such as the computerized touchscreen system used in Riverside County with great success this election. He and Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) are developing a state assistance plan that would provide up to $300 million for counties to buy new machines. It’s absurd that counties continue to bear the full cost of modernizing ballot equipment. They are the governments least able to afford such an outlay.

Six counties, including Los Angeles, still use the Votomatic punch-card devices that caused such trouble in Florida. Replacing them, possibly with touchscreens, should be a priority. Los Angeles County supervisors support this idea and are prepared to put up as much as $100 million to finance the project. Twenty-nine other California counties have punch-card systems that do not produce chads, and 22 use a ballot that is marked with a special pen and then scanned electronically.

There is some concern about the touch-screen system because it involves no paper ballot. But the computer retains a record of each vote cast, and the touchscreen machines will not allow a citizen to vote twice.

One other advantage of the touchscreen and some forms of scanners is that voters have a chance to recheck their choices to determine whether they mismarked the ballot.

Jones also wants to require some sort of personal identification before giving a voter a ballot. Currently, California now takes the word of the voter, but it’s not unreasonable to require some proof of identity such as a driver’s license or a copy of the addressed sample ballot mailed to each registered voter’s home.

For the longer term, Assemblyman Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco) is sponsoring legislation to ultimately establish online or Internet voting, assuming that questions of voter security can be overcome. During the coming year, Jones, the counties and legislative leaders should coordinate their efforts and develop a comprehensive voting reform measure.

Nationally, there are demands for fast reform of election systems. California is fortunate to have clear rules on counting ballots and an experienced innovator in Jones, who will resist a quick fix in favor of the right fix.