Paxety Pages

Following the controversy, a group of people, assisted by the mainstream news media, screamed for the installation of electronic voting machines.  They argued that there would be no controversy over future voting.  People who weren't so sure were shouted down. There were lots of folks, for instance, who thought putting the new, computer touch-screen machines in the counties with the oldest populations was a sure path to disaster.

Now we've had a several elections with the new machines, and one of the counties that installed them, Dade, is thinking about taking them out. The Miami Herald reports the county has asked for a study to replace the new machines with paper ballots.

The request from County Manager George Burgess follows the recent resignation of Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan and the revelation that hundreds of votes in recent elections hadn't been counted.

In a memo, Burgess asked new elections chief Lester Sola to assess whether optical scanners, which count votes marked on ''bubble sheets,'' would deliver more accurate results. Burgess also wants information on how much a switch would cost -- and how much it might save in the long run.

County officials say the new machines tripled costs - and a coding error caused hundreds of votes to be discarded over six recent elections.

Just to the north in Broward County, Mayor Kristen Jacobs says she is sorry her county spent the money for the touch-screen machines, too.

''I understand that we've invested a lot of money in the electronic machines, but I would be more comfortable with optical scan because it gives you the ease of computerization and a paper trail,'' she said. ``Hindsight is 20-20. In retrospect I probably would have gone with optical scan but we're beyond that now, and we've had minimal problems in Broward.''

Read the whole thing.

Here in Jacksonville, the old punch card ballots were replaced by the optical scanners now being considered in Dade County.  I'm not aware of any controversy here.