Florida poll officials misplace 103,222 votes in Broward Co.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The polls opened on time and the new voting machines worked properly, but Broward County election officials couldn't get the results right in Tuesday's election.

Between 1 a.m. and 5 p.m. Wednesday, the elections office found it had left 103,222 votes out of the total ballots cast, including 34,136 votes for the governor's race, even though the total announced at 1 a.m. was given as a 100 percent count.

The additional votes didn't change the outcome of any race, although state Rep. Nan Rich, D-Weston, widened her lead in a tough re-election bid. Election officials miscalculated the turnout data and said they also botched the numbers by not including ballots cast by English-speaking early voters in the tallies.

The most significant impact of the missing votes was on the size of Broward's turnout. Initial results showed an extraordinarily low turnout of 34 percent, with 337,976 casting votes, but the revised numbers boosted turnout to 45 percent with 441,198 voting.

The erroneous numbers were sent to the state, given to the news media and posted on the elections office's Web site. County Judge Jay Spechler, chairman of the election canvassing board, said officials should be more cautious in the future in releasing unofficial results before they can be verified.

"I think there are some things that need to be audited before they're disseminated to the public," Spechler said.

Double-counting?

Some remained skeptical about what happened and raised the possibility that the county was double-counting votes. "It's another screw-up, and I'm not satisfied this is correct," Broward Republican leader George Lemieux said.

Even with the change, the turnout was Broward's lowest for a gubernatorial election in at least three decades, and one of the worst in the state. Only DeSoto, Dixie and Levy counties, each rural counties with fewer than 20,000 registered voters, posted poorer turnouts.

Overall, Florida had one of the best turnouts in the nation because of the closely watched race between Gov. Jeb Bush and Tampa lawyer Bill McBride, with 53 percent of state voters casting ballots.

Since 1970, Broward turnout for a gubernatorial election had dropped below 50 percent only twice. Turnout was 46 percent in 1998 and 49 percent in 1990.

Election observers differed on the reasons why so many of Broward's 978,000 voters stayed home.

Some argued McBride never fired up the Democratic strongholds in Broward. Others said people stayed away out of disgust with the county's election problems and its latest incarnation _ hours-long waits at early voting sites.

But all said only the county's hard-core voters participated in the election, people who would vote regardless of the strength of candidates, the weather or the long lines.

Jim Kane, editor of the Florida Voter newsletter, and Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University, said voter confidence in Broward's election process declined enough that news reports about long lines dissuaded many.

"This may be a case of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me," deHaven-Smith said. "There was concern after the 2000 election that people may be turned off by the political process and that they would be convinced their vote wouldn't count. Then there was a strong turnout in the September primary, but more problems." But news reports weren't the only reason people didn't vote. There were problems with voter registration information, confusion about polling places and mistakes from the early voting process.

While changing no outcomes, Wednesday's additional votes altered results across the board.

Among the changes, McBride netted an extra 13,815 votes against Bush, Attorney General Bob Butterworth netted an extra 473 against state Rep. Jeff Atwater in a state Senate race and U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw netted an extra 935 against challenger Carol Roberts. McBride and Butterworth still lost, and Shaw widened his winning margin.

Mike Lindsey, an observer for the state Division of Elections, said the numbers that weren't reported in the initial total were never in danger of being lost.

He said that the election software system stores data in different areas and that the summary reports distributed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were formatted incorrectly, omitting some of the figures.

The canvassing board will meet Friday to certify the results and submit them to the state.