Supervisor explains new audit law
By Pat Hatfield
posted Jun 18, 2008 - 8:59:07am
A new state law requires Elections Offices across Florida to conduct manual audits of every election.
After an election, the date, time and place of the election audit would be announced, so people could attend and observe.
The canvassing board would randomly select one race from the election, and randomly select between 1 percent and 2 percent of the precincts voting in that race.
The ballots cast in those precincts would have to be recounted by hand, and the results compared to the results that were certified.
THE IDEA
Change city elections to even-numbered years, so city elections would happen at the same time we vote for state legislators, members of Congress and presidents.
PRO
• More voters would turn out to vote in city races.
• Cities would save money.
• It would be easier to comply with the new state law that requires a small portion of each election to be audited.
CON
• Long ballots would be even longer.
• Candidates for city offices would have to compete for attention in a field of big, well-funded campaigns.
• There would be fewer audits to check for election accuracy.
“The audit shall consist of a public manual tally of the votes cast in one randomly selected race that appears on the ballot.” — from Florida State Statute 101.591
THE STORY
A new state law requires elections offices to manually audit a few “randomly selected precincts” in “one randomly selected race” after every election.
In odd-numbered years, when 16 Volusia County cities have their city-council and city-commission elections, that means 16 audits. All of the audits must be completed within seven days after the election.
Volusia County Elections Supervisor Ann McFall has been visiting cities across the county, suggesting there might be a better way.
If cities would piggyback on state and national elections held in even-numbered years, the cities could save money and fewer audits would be required.
“It’s come time to say, ‘Maybe change,’” McFall told the DeBary City Council during a presentation June 4.
In addition to saving money, the elections supervisor told council members, DeBary would likely increase its voter turnout. Ordinarily, few voters — 10 percent or 15 percent — cast ballots in city-commission races. Turnout for presidential elections, however, can be as high as 80 percent.
McFall’s idea has been warmly received in most of the cities she has visited. Many municipalities, including DeBary, Ormond Beach and Holly Hill, are in some phase of preparing ordinances or referendums on the topic.
Not everyone, however, thinks it’s a good idea.
Like Volusia County, Brevard County has 16 cities. Most of Brevard’s smaller cities hold elections in odd years, and bigger cities hold them in even years.
Brevard Elections Supervisor Hubert Childress Jr. said he doesn’t think auditing the city elections will be a burden.
No one in Brevard, Childress said, is discussing shifting municipal elections.
“It would be a convenience, certainly,” he conceded.
Childress said if there’s a problem in 2009’s city elections, a plan like McFall’s might be considered.
In Flagler County, Elections Supervisor Peggy Rae Border doesn’t foresee changing election times, either.
“We have all of our city elections scheduled in March of each year,” Border said.
Seminole County Elections Supervisor Michael Ertel, however, favors piggybacking city elections on larger ones.
“We have seven cities, and we have tried to work with the cities to hold elections at the same time as state and federal elections. It saves a lot of money,” Ertel said, adding, “It dramatically increases voting in municipal elections.”
Increasing voter turnout is good, but there are other issues to consider, said Susan Pynchon, executive director of Florida Fair Elections Coalition, who announced June 12 she will run against McFall for the Volusia County elections-supervisor job.
Pynchon said she is concerned about local races vying with state and national races for voter attention.
City-council and city-commission candidates might have a tough time gathering funds and volunteers in election years when voters are focused on hotly contested national or state seats, Pynchon said.
She’s also concerned that combining elections reduces the number of audits required under the new law.
She downplayed McFall’s concern about finishing several municipal-election audits within seven days.
“You’re looking at a very small number of ballots,” Pynchon said.
Auditing only one or two precincts in one race should take no more than two or three hours, Pynchon said, not the two days McFall has estimated.
McFall’s predecessor as elections supervisor, Deanie Lowe, was behind the move to get Volusia County’s cities to all vote in the fall of the odd-numbered years.
Lowe said when she took office in 1993, “Elections were strung out across the calendar, literally, from January to December. We were holding an election almost every month.”
Most cities went along with Lowe’s plan for uniform municipal elections.
“It worked out well,” she said.
Lowe is concerned that McFall’s suggestion to add municipal elections to state and national elections will lengthen already-long ballots.
Going from a one-page ballot to a two-page ballot is a potential problem, she said.
Voters who send in absentee ballots may not mail in both pages, causing confusion.
“How are you going to reconcile your ballots?” she asked.
Lowe is also concerned about candidates for seats in municipalities being forced to compete with big-name candidates in state and national elections. This will make it hard for locals to get much attention, or get known.
“These are the problems I see, but I understand Ann’s concerns,” Lowe said.
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