EVERY VOTE COUNTS—Thanks to strong leadership from Gov. Crist, Florida lawmakers have finally taken steps to restore some voter confidence in Florida’s elections by replacing faulty touch-screen voting machines with ones that produce a verifiable paper record.

Law Nixes Faulty Touch-Screen Voting

Voter confidence in Florida’s elections has flagged in recent years due to a steady stream of election errors. Florida PIRG’s work to make every vote count paid off on May 2 when the governor signed a bill to replace the state’s error-prone touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan voting machines that will produce a voter-verified paper trail.

The touch-screen machines were used in 5 counties. Prone to malfunction, the machines failed to produce a paper record of every vote cast, giving voters and election officials little recourse in the event of a technical problem or suspected tampering.

“When you go to the polls in 2008, your vote is more likely to be counted accurately,” said Florida PIRG Legislative Advocate Brad Ashwell. ”Voters statewide can feel more confident in Florida’s election results.”

Throughout the legislative session, Florida PIRG worked with members of the Florida Voters Coalition, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and the People for the American Way to make sure that this important reform passed.

Florida PIRG lobbied legislators and thousands of Florida PIRG members contacted their senators and representatives urging them to pass a clean elections bill.

Unfortunately, legislative members took advantage of the strong momentum behind this bill during the final week of the session and added a series of bad provisions that will stifle future voter registration efforts by grassroots organizations and strip key voter protections.

Florida PIRG is urging the legislature to come back and remove these anti-democratic provisions at the first opportunity.