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It just stunned me "O" seeing a ballot called "Broken Arrows"

Palm Beach County's absentee ballot points voters to confusion, some say

By Jane Musgrave
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Jim Kemp shuddered when he saw Palm Beach County's absentee ballot.

"People aren't going to understand this," he said of the ballot, which instructs people to connect an arrow to vote for the candidate of their choice. "It's just going to be a mess again."

From the butterfly ballot to the {{broken arrow,}} Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore is setting up the county for another election meltdown potentially, said the Delray Beach retiree, who was communications director for Children's Hospital in Miami and a communications specialist for the Palm Beach County School District.

Kemp and others wonder why LePore had to complicate matters by using the {{broken arrow}} when voters could be asked simply to fill in a circle to indicate their vote, known as bubbling in.

"People have to bubble in a lot of things today, but I've never seen where you have to connect an arrow," he said.

Debbie Dent, Martin County's deputy supervisor of elections, agreed.

"I just tell people it's like filling in a Lotto card, and they get it right away," she said.

Palm Beach County is the only county in South Florida where absentee voters are asked to connect the arrow next to a candidate's name instead of filling in a bubble. Miami-Dade, Broward, Martin and St. Lucie counties all ask voters to bubble in.

LePore defends the arrow method: "If I had used circles, they'd complain about the circles."

LePore opted to use the arrow format after tests showed it was easier for voters, she said. Indian River County Supervisor of Elections Kay Klem, former president of the Florida Association of Elections Supervisors, said she instituted arrows for the same reason.

But some who study voting behavior say the arrows aren't necessarily easier for voters. However, they are easier to read for optical scanners, which are used to count absentee ballots.

"People do the crazier things when they're asked to connect the arrows," said Stephen Ansolabehere, a former director of the Voting Technology Project, a collaboration between CalTech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

With absentee voting set for a sharp rise in the Aug. 31 primary and the Nov. 2 general election, many are wondering whether the arrow ballot could be the 2004 version of LePore's infamous 2000 butterfly ballot.

Absentee ballot demand up

Fueled by Democrats who say voters shouldn't trust touch-screen machines and Republicans who have long pushed absentee ballots as a way to increase voter turnout, elections supervisors say requests for absentee ballots are shattering old records.

With a week to go before Friday's deadline to request mail-in ballots, Palm Beach County had received a whopping 30,752 requests — nearly three times the 11,472 requested before the 2000 primary.

In Martin County, requests are up by a quarter from four years ago, and in St. Lucie County requests have more than doubled. In Broward County, a Democratic stronghold, requests have tripled.

A Palm Beach Post review of more than 300 absentee ballots cast in this year's March Democratic presidential primary showed that some people circle their choices, put check marks by them and wrote "yes" or "no" next to candidate names.

LePore said voters have carved holes next to candidate's names. If there's a way to do it wrong, some voters will find it, regardless of whether they are asked to fill in arrows or bubbles.

Ansolabehere of the Voting Technology Project said studies have shown that while arrows create more confusion, scanners can better process those that have been filled out correctly than ballots that have been bubbled in.

"Those two things cancel each other out," said Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT.

Ballots that are filled out improperly are kicked out by the scanner. A local canvassing board reviews the rejected ballots to determine what the voter was trying to do. If voter intent is determined, duplicate ballots are made and fed through the machine.

The only exception is if a voter properly filled out a ballot in some races and not in others. The scanners don't reject ballots simply because a vote isn't cast in one or more races. Undervotes, as they are called, are expected because many voters don't care about minor offices, such as a seat on a drainage district board or mosquito control board.

Klem, the Indian River County elections chief, said voter confusion has forced her workers to duplicate many absentee ballots. But, she said, the numbers are dwindling as voters become accustomed to the format.

Such duplication adds substantially to the time it takes to count ballots. However, even with record numbers of absentee ballots streaming in, elections supervisors said they expect to be able to handle the crush by hiring extra workers.

State law allows absentee ballots to be processed four days before the election, although the votes can't be tabulated. Elections officials said they are likely to begin opening ballots for the Aug. 31 primary on Saturday.

Some envision the absentee votes holding up the election results.

With close elections and absentee voting becoming the norm throughout the country, Ansolabehere acknowledged that people may have to get used to not learning who won within hours after the polls close.

"It's a very time-consuming process," he said, noting that in states like Oregon, a vote-by-mail state, and Washington, where absentee voting is used extensively, it takes weeks to count the votes. "We're going to have to learn to be more patient."