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Tallahassee Democrat, January 9, 2008

Signature glitch endangers ballot initiatives

By Paige St. John

TALLAHASSEE -- A glitch lurking within Florida's new $23 million computer voter system is skewing the count of petition signatures -- some by so much the error threatens to keep some of them from the November ballot.

By state law, organizations running citizen initiatives to change the state constitution have until Feb. 1 to collect more than 611,009 voter signatures to put their issues on the ballot.

In November, state election officials privately told county election supervisors the petition signature counts Florida was reporting -- and that initiative campaigns rely on to keep track of where they are on the process -- were wrong.

As of this week, the state still did not know by how much.

Instead of figuring out the error, the Department of State has asked county election supervisors to go back through four years of records and resubmit their own tallies. They have until Jan. 11 to do so, and that number will then become the official figure from which counting resumes.

At least one ballot initiative campaign -- to require local votes on changes in development plans -- could be derailed by the error. Its organizers are livid.

"Given everything that's happened in Florida with elections and the lack of integrity in the voting process here, we have yet another example of where the state election system is incompetent," said Lesley Blackner, the lawyer running the Hometown Democracy campaign, a ballot initiative to require public votes on county and city comprehensive plan amendments.