Posted on Fri, Sep. 13, 2002 Leahy: Unskilled workers to blame BY ALFONSO CHARDY, TERE FIGUERAS AND MARTIN MERZER mmerzer@herald.com

PATRICK FARRELL/HERALD STAFF LONG DAYS: Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections David Leahy is under scrutiny once again.

Miami-Dade County officials lost faith Thursday in their own ballot count, saying a spot check of returns from Tuesday's botched primary revealed serious discrepancies that could require a re-examination of all 7,200 machines.

The extraordinary development called into question the outcome of several close statewide races, including the Democratic gubernatorial primary between Janet Reno and Bill McBride.

It also raised fresh questions about the new iVotronic touch-screen machines, the same brand bought by Broward County Election Supervisor Miriam Oliphant and supervisors in 10 other Florida counties.

Gwen Margolis, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade County Commission and a member of the election canvassing board, predicted that returns from every machine in the county would have to be recounted.

The machines were supposed to help repair, and restore faith in, Florida's shattered electoral system.

''I don't see any choice but to do it this way,'' Margolis said of a full recount in Miami-Dade. ``You can't rush through this.''

And when she was told of this new problem? ''It took my breath away,'' she said. ``It's outrageous.''

One indication of serious trouble that materialized Thursday:

Several Miami-Dade precincts, each with hundreds of registered voters, are listed as showing one or even no votes cast Tuesday, a virtual impossibility. Broward's tabulation shows at least one precinct with hundreds of registered voters and no votes cast.

''When you get one vote in a place with 1,500 registered voters, you know there's something wrong,'' said David Leahy, Miami-Dade's election supervisor.

It was not known if similar concerns have been raised by Oliphant, who bought 5,200 iVotronics for Broward. She and her assistants refused to answer any substantive inquiry Thursday about the election or the tally.

By Thursday night, many questions remained but this seemed clear: The primary that began chaotically in Broward and Miami-Dade was ending the same way.

''We've gone from dead folks voting to live folks not being able to vote,'' said Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler, who called for Leahy to step aside and allow an outside expert to take over.

Leahy, who didn't respond to that call, filed unofficial countywide vote totals by noon Thursday, as required by state law. But a few hours later, he said the tally might have been seriously compromised by a combination of human error and mechanical complexity.

''We found a lot of votes that had not been collected,'' he said.

The problem: Spot checks showed serious differences within the same precincts between vote totals produced by the main tabulation system and a backup system.

THE NUMBERS

Gisela Salas, one of Leahy's top aides, said experts were trying to assess the magnitude of the problem, which could be enormous.

Discrepancies were found in four precincts and suspected in at least eight others.

One of the four precincts was 254 at Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City. The initial count showed 89 votes cast there, but when the backup system was applied Thursday morning, 610 votes appeared.

Also, votes in precinct 148 in North Miami went from one to 497; in precinct 105 in Northeast Miami-Dade, from two to 434; in precinct 14 in Miami Beach, from four to 373.

Leahy hastened to add that no votes were believed to have been lost forever. They remain inside each machine's computerized memory, he said, but for unknown reasons were not transferred to collection devices after the election.

The main tabulation system uses a device called a ''master activator,'' which harvests votes from the touch-screen machines on election night and transmits them to headquarters through telephone lines.

The backup system uses ''a flash-card PEB,'' a device that reads memory chips installed on the touch screens. That process requires machines to be transported to election headquarters, a laborious and time-consuming procedure.

The process of reading those memory chips is called ''re-collecting,'' a new term in Florida's lexicon of electoral snafus.

''This is like chads,'' Salas said, perhaps choosing an unfortunate comparison. ``We have to do re-collection education. This is the new, improved version.''

She said employees were examining printouts from all 754 Miami-Dade precincts and would double-check any provocative return. That process could last through the weekend. If more anomalies are found, more ''re-collecting'' will be necessary, she said.

Leahy said much of the problem might be attributed to poll worker inexperience. He said some workers might have removed the activators before all votes were harvested. That would suggest another failure of training.

It is also possible, he said, that some activators failed to work properly.

''It may be because they didn't have time, or may have been because they couldn't retrieve the data,'' Leahy said. ``They stuck in the master [activator] and nothing happened. It wouldn't upload.''

A spokesman for Election Systems & Software, the company that makes the iVotronic, said in a statement Thursday that it was conducting ''a thorough analysis of all reported issues'' but was certain that no votes ``were lost or not counted.''

Many South Floridians might question the scope of that statement. Hundreds or possibly thousands of would-be voters walked away without casting ballots Tuesday when an epidemic of start-up problems created long delays and lines.

Early indications Thursday suggested that the problem might extend into Broward.

Although the official tally showed no votes in Pembroke Pines' precinct 32X, voters cast ballots there, according to Angelo Castillo, a Republican who said he voted there Tuesday.

''I pressed the red button,'' Castillo said. 'It said, `Thank you for voting' and I left.''

The precinct, at Fire Station 79, was one of many Broward polls that didn't open on time. County documents show 832 registered voters in the precinct.

Broward's Oliphant, whose competence was under attack from many quarters, filed a complete vote tally by the noon deadline, but amid considerable confusion.

Broward completed its tally at 11:12 p.m. Wednesday, but only after misplaced election machines -- at least one carried in the backseat of a 80-year-old poll worker's sedan -- finally found their way to headquarters.

MODEM TROUBLE

Tabulation problems in Broward began when modems in at least three of 14 regional tabulation centers didn't work. Poll workers were forced to take activators to Fort Lauderdale for processing.

Broward also misplaced about 250 activators on election night, according to an e-mail from Mike Lindsey, a state elections official who observed the count.

''They were improperly received by the warehouse crew, and were put up with precinct supplies!'' read the note sent to state Elections Director Ed Kast at 5:36 a.m. Wednesday.

Even at tabulation centers where modems were working, not enough people were available to handle the devices, according to county employees who were assisting Oliphant's office.

Back in Miami-Dade, Leahy distributed what he called ''final unofficial'' results at 3:30 a.m Thursday, more than 30 hours after polls closed.

One of many hitches in the process: Five voting machines from Emerson Elementary had been prematurely stored in a county warehouse, their returns untabulated.

Machines from four other polling locations didn't arrive until 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, also more than 24 hours late.

In both cases, the actual machines were required because poll workers were unable to transmit vote totals from 13 precincts to election headquarters.

Earlier in the process, Leahy reported that problems with the master activators caused data to be lost from at least 25 precincts in Hialeah, North Miami, Kendall, Doral and other parts of the county.

The devices, which resemble electric typewriter cartridges, were either damaged or rendered unreadable, he said. Each device contained data from all 10 to 12 machines in each precinct.

The botched vote counts, missed deadlines and other new complications aroused more dissonant echoes of Florida's embarrassingly inept presidential election of 2000.

Judicial Watch, a national group that investigates government abuses, requested that the Miami-Dade and Broward elections officials allow inspections of all ballots, computers and training material related to Tuesday's election.

Election officials in Miami-Dade and Broward did not immediately respond to the demand, which was filed under the Florida Sunshine law.

After the 2000 election, the group won similar access in Palm Beach County, home of the infamous butterfly ballot that confused thousands of voters.

''We want to get to the bottom of this [latest] election mess, and we want to hold those responsible personally accountable in a court of law,'' said Larry Klayman, chairman of the group, which is based in Washington, D.C.

Herald staff writers Joni James, Phil Long, Joan Quigley, Andrea Robinson, Karl Ross and Luisa Yanez contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2002