Florida Judge Backs Manual Recounts

A state rule barring the 15 Florida counties with touch-screen voting from conducting manual recounts is at odds with state law, which requires hand recounts in some close elections, a judge ruled Friday.

A coalition including a labor union, government watchdogs and other interest groups sued the state, arguing that the law required provisions for hand recounts in every county, no matter what voting technology was used.

Administrative Law Judge Susan Kirkland agreed with the coalition, writing that state law clearly contemplates “that manual recounts will be done on each certified voting system, including the touchscreen voting systems.”

With a primary election Tuesday and more than half the state’s voters in counties that use touch screens, it is not clear what those counties will do.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who issued the ruling preventing manual recounts in touch-screen counties in April, was considering appealing Friday’s decision, a spokeswoman said.

An appeal would keep Hood’s rule in place.

Elections supervisors in some of the 15 counties with touch screens had asked the state what they should do about a law requiring manual recounts when elections were particularly close, because the machines the counties use were not programmed to create a paper record of each vote.

The Division of Elections issued the rule in April, saying that because touch screens did not let people vote for the same candidate twice or unintentionally fail to vote in a particular race, there was no reason for touch-screen counties to conduct hand recounts.

“The touch-screen machines were put in place to avoid the problems that were encountered in the 2000 election,” said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Hood who criticized Friday’s ruling. “This ruling is a step backward to that time.”