Posted on 09/10/2001 10:13:11 PM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Infamous Palm Beach County voting machine goes into museum
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
By BILL KACZOR, Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE — A punch-card voting machine complete with a butterfly ballot, its chads neither dimpled nor pregnant, became a museum piece Monday.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore handed over the portable, suitcase-size Votomatic to Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Division of Elections. It will be part of the new Florida Center for Political History and Governance in the Old Capitol.
Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Division of Elections, right, accepts a voting machine from Palm Beach County supervisor of elections Theresa LePore, Monday in Tallahassee. The punch card machine, one of 5,000 used in the November 2000 national election, will be displayed in the Florida Center for Political History and Governance museum located in the Old Capitol Building in Tallahassee. The machines became nationally reknowned for their role in the presidential election and controversies over the butterfly ballot and hanging chads. Palm Beach County commissioners have voted to purchase touch screen machines for use in next year's gubernatorial elections.
The machine was the first of several destined for museums as artifacts from the 2000 presidential election. Most of Palm Beach County's 5,000 Votomatics, however, will be sold, probably auctioned via the Internet, to help pay for a new $14 million touch-screen system.
"I'm not sure why somebody would want one of these to put in their living room or wherever, but I guess it is a piece of history," LePore said.
She expects the machines, which originally cost about $150 each, to sell for at least $500 each.
Last year's historic election was decided in Florida where now-President Bush won by only 537 votes.
A statewide recount, halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, was hampered in counties that used punch-card ballots by questions over chads — the little tabs punched out to record a vote — that were not fully detached.
The Florida Legislature this year ordered that all punch-card machines be retired and replaced with optical-scan or touch-screen systems.
Another punch-card machine will be donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in a couple of weeks, LePore said. Several other museums across the nation also have requested them.
One will remain in LePore's office as a reminder that "no good deed goes unpunished," she said.
Many voters claimed the butterfly ballot approved by LePore was so confusing they voted for the wrong candidates.
The format, listing some candidates to the left and others to the right of their punch holes, was intended to help elderly voters because it permitted using larger type.
The machines were not solely to blame for the recount problems, LePore said.
"I liken it to the book and the movie 'Perfect Storm' where everything just collided at the same time," she said, adding some good came from the fiasco because of the new voting equipment and people becoming more aware that every vote counts.
The touch-screen system, in which voters press a computer screen to record their ballots, includes audio capability for blind and illiterate voters. It also doesn't allow overvotes — voting for two people in the same race — and reminds voters of races they have skipped before accepting their ballots.
"We'd like to say it's close, but nothing is idiot-proof," LePore said.
And when does that smarmy little twerp Shepard Smith of FNC go on trial for running down the reporterette during the election coverage? Inquiring minds want to know.
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