Not again – Palm Beach County creates election mess

Here we go again -- Florida, home of the hanging chads, and in particular Palm Beach County, inventor of the “butterfly ballot,” has created another election mess just as a tight finish for president -- in the nation and in all-important Florida -- is approaching quickly.

The Palm Beach Post reports that 27,000 filled-out absentee ballots in Palm Beach County were improperly printed and cannot be read by tabulation machines. So, in another one of those high-tech solutions for which Florida election officials are famous, the votes cast on all those ballots will be copied by hand onto properly laid-out ballots.
Representatives from both the Obama and Romney campaigns will be present, watching for signs of trouble. But with just 527 votes deciding the Florida presidential outcome in the disputed election of 2000, the prospect for errors in a 27,000-ballot recounting project seems frightening.

“Every time you duplicate a ballot, you run the risk of making a mistake, particularly with 27,000 ballots,” former Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning -- whose job included overseeing the state’s elections bureaucracy -- told The Palm Beach Post.

Miami attorney Raquel Rodriguez, statewide co-chair of Lawyers for Romney, objected last week to the process that county Election Supervisor Susan Bucher had designed for the hand-copying, saying it didn’t follow state law, The Post reported. “She’s inventing a procedure,” Rodriguez said.

Adding to the drama is the fact that Florida (and Michigan and countless other states) did not learn one of the basic lessons of 2000: Election officials should not be chosen for office in partisan elections, and they should not be allowed to delve into partisan politics.

In this case, Bucher, who is overseeing the ballot recreation process, is a former Democratic member of the state House.

I may be partial but I say that, if you’re going to have a ballot-counting controversy, stick with the chads.