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Suspicious of voting systems, some Republicans demand 'more secure' option for early voting in Palm Beach County

Anthony Man, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on

Published in News & Features

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It’s an innovation that just a few years ago was so uncontroversial hardly anyone noticed: A voting system allowing people to move more quickly through early voting lines and reduce the chance of making a mistake that could invalidate a vote. The setup drew a universally positive response in comment cards filled out by Palm Beach County voters.

Not anymore.

In today’s era of increased distrust in the way elections are run, especially on the political right, the ExpressVote system used for early voting in Palm Beach County since 2021 is suddenly controversial to some in 2024.

The Palm Beach County Republican Party, in its email newsletter, urged voters to refuse an ExpressVote ballot at early voting and instead insist on a fill-in-the-oval ballot. The Republican Party asserted it’s a “more secure” option.

The party’s nominee for the job of running county elections is also attempting to create voter angst over ExpressVote, as are posts on social media.

There is no evidence supporting the claims of problems with ExpressVote, which is used by the vast majority of early voters in Palm Beach County.

“There’s people trying to create an issue where none exists,” said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link. “They’re trying to sow distrust.”

Some voters “are nervous about it” after hearing misinformation about the system, Link said. “They’re being told false information,” she said.

Ironically, one of the nation’s chief purveyors of broad false election information — former President Donald Trump, a Palm Beach resident — used ExpressVote when he voted early in the Florida primary on Aug. 14. He didn’t offer any complaints, and as he left the early voting center, Trump said it was a “great honor” to vote and praised the poll workers for doing a “fantastic job.”

And ballots cast using ExpressVote for early voting in 2022 helped Republicans make historic gains in Palm Beach County.

What is ExpressVote?

Florida law allows in-person early voting at any of the regional early voting centers in the county in which they live.

Every person has to get a ballot that corresponds to all the districts in which they live, and Palm Beach County has 799 precincts, Link said. There are myriad combinations — U.S. House, Florida Senate, Florida House, County Commission, School Board, city government, plus agencies such as the Port of Palm Beach commission.

Because people can go to any early voting site, it’s impossible to stock all the potential permutations of ballots at every location. That’s not an issue on the final day of voting, Election Day, Nov. 5, because people have to vote at neighborhood polling stations, each of which are stocked with preprinted ballots for that location.

For early voting, many counties — including Broward — deploy high-speed, on-demand ballot printers to all their early voting sites. After a voter checks in, the printer produces a ballot tailored to where that person lives even if it’s at the other end of the county.

Check in is the same with ExpressVote. The voter gets a ballot with a barcode. When a person inserts it into the ExpressVote machine, Link said the screen allows a person to select the size of the type they’d like to see and the language they prefer (English, Spanish or Creole).

After the voter makes all of their choices, the screen shows a summary, and a person can make changes. When the voter finishes, the selections are printed on the ballot. The voter can review all the choices again before actually depositing it in the ballot box.

Even if it’s already printed, if someone wants to make a change, they can have a poll worker “spoil” the ballot and get a new one to start over again.

Still, Link said, if voters don’t want an ExpressVote ballot, they don’t have to use one. All the early voting sites have high-speed printers, and Link said voters who want a ballot that requires filing in ovals can receive one.

Also she said, a voter who wants to triple-check their ExpressVote ballot can wait until a different machine is free and insert their ballot to see if the candidates that are printed on the ballot and that they intended to vote for show up on the screen.

‘Significantly faster’

ExpressVote began as a way for people with disabilities to vote more easily using features such as the ability to make the type on the screen much larger. That’s how many counties, including Broward, still use ExpressVote, which is available at all early voting sites.

Link said she decided to use ExpressVote because it has several advantages, mainly that it’s faster for voters and reduces the chance a voter error could cost someone their vote.

“It’s significantly faster,” she said.

It takes 45 seconds for an on-demand printer to produce a ballot for a voter. It takes 3 seconds for ExpressVote to produce a ballot.

Individually that sounds like an insignificant amount of time. But collectively, all that added printing time can mean longer lines. For an early voting site that gets 1,500 voters in a day, which many have during the initial days in Palm Beach County, that equates to 17 hours of extra time.

“When you have a long line and you’re trying to get people (through) faster, it’s 15 times longer to print the traditional (fill-in-the-oval) ballot,” she said.

It’s also faster for the voter to use and more accurate, Link said.

The ability to pick a type size and avoid being slowed down by other languages, plus not having to fill in each oval with a pen, makes it go faster.

Also, she said, people filing in ovals with pens sometimes make extra marks on the ballot or fill it out incorrectly, which requires the elections Canvassing Board to try to determine a voter’s intent. If the Canvassing Board can’t figure it out, the vote isn’t counted.

Palm Beach County began using ExpressVote for early voting during 2021 special elections, and did so again in 2022 elections and in the 2024 primary, which is how Trump came to use it.

To be used, voting systems, including Elections Systems & Software’s ExpressVote, are tested by the Florida Department of State, an agency overseen by DeSantis, and certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Katina Granger, senior manager of public relations at Election Systems & Software, said the company also hires independent, accredited laboratories to ensure the security of its systems.

Overall, Link said, concerns about the machines aren’t widespread. “People are loving the machines, love the experience,” she said.

 

Voters have been invited to submit comment cards since widespread use of the system began in 2021. Link said responses were overwhelmingly positive, and that was largely the same through the 2022 elections — but this year is different.

“Misinformation is always out there — and there’s a lot of it this time,” she said.

Link, a lawyer for 25 years with a long résumé of business, governmental and civic activities, was appointed supervisor of elections by DeSantis in 2019. She was a Republican at the time, but later became a Democrat and won a four-year term in the job in 2020. She is running for reelection this year.

She said there is far more misinformation this year than in either of the other general elections she ran, in 2020 or 2022.

Governor’s race

ExpressVote was in use at Palm Beach County early voting sites during the 2022 midterm elections.

That’s notable in light of this year’s Republican complaints because the 2022 election was the year Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made history by winning the county.

Until 2022, only statewide Republican candidates — former state CFO Jeff Atwater, who lived in Palm Beach County — had won the heavily Democratic county in more than a decade.

In 2022, DeSantis actually did better during early voting, which used ExpressVote, than his overall performance in Palm Beach County.

DeSantis received 51.2% of the vote overall in the county. During early voting, DeSantis received 60.5%, indicating early voting using ExpressVote did not hurt the year’s leading Republican candidate.

Concerns or conspiracies?

Since Trump lost the 2020 election, and he and his supporters spread election conspiracy theories, suspicions about voting systems have increased.

And that has spread to the ES&S’s ExpressVote system, which is in use throughout Flroida and the U.S.

A Palm Beach County Republican Party email message warned that “most voters are not aware that the default, within the early voting locations, is to encourage the use of the electronic voting machine, ExpressVote.”

It repeatedly cites, in capital letters, the barcode printed on the ballot that the tabulation machine uses to tally the votes. “As it relates to election security, a voter cannot decipher a BARCODE.” The Republican Party’s recommendation: “The MORE SECURE option is to request a printed paper ballot.”

The concerns have been amplified on social media.

Link said there have been no verified reports of problems. If someone says they’ve had a problem, she said the ExpressVote machine is taken out of service until a technician can check it, which so far hasn’t yielded any issues.

One woman initially complained that her intended votes weren’t showing up for her preferred candidates. Poll workers noticed her long fingernails, and the voter and poll workers figured out that she was inadvertently tapping the wrong candidate; when they provided her with a stylus she was able to touch the candidates she wanted and voted successfully.

Jeff Buongiorno, the Republican hoping to unseat Link in next week’s election, faulted what he said was Link’s “blind trust and faith in the system.” He said he did not want to be referred to as an “election denier” or a “Trump acolyte.”

Responding to questions via email, he said the ExpressVote machines “are flawed and do not report voter intent consistently.” He asserted that “may be as simple as static electricity inherent in the environment or perhaps more complex and nefarious factors.”

Granger, the ES&S representative, disputed those contentions.

“The ExpressVote is a proven paper-based voting device, used in hundreds of jurisdictions across the county. When a voter uses a ballot marking device, their choices are readily available for review and the paper ballot will be cast and counted as the voter intended,” Granger said via email.

“The advantage of the ExpressVote is the accurate capture of voter intent — no stray marks, no crossed-out selections that might cause a paper-only ballot to not be counted or counted wrong,” she said.

Buongiorno also asserted that “votes are flipping.” ES&S said that is not true. “Touch screen voting machines do not flip votes,” Granger said. People can “see and verify those choices on screen and on a paper ballot before casting that paper for tabulation.”

About the “static electricity” claim, Granger said federal certification includes electrical hardware testing. “As part of that testing, voting machines endure ‘electric static discharge testing,’ to ensure that static electricity in the environment or from a voter’s touch does not impact the functionality of the system,” she said.

Trump mannequin

One early voting site at the Palm Beach County Main Library is getting more people declining to use Express Vote than any other location in the county.

ExpressVote critics at the location — across the street from the Trump International Golf Club near West Palm Beach — are using a mannequin dressed like Trump to spread their message.

The mannequin was in place Monday afternoon, just outside the 150-foot mark where politicking is prohibited outside polling places.

The mannequin is outfitted with a rubber Donald Trump mask. Its fist is raised in defiance, the way the real Trump raised his fist after an assassination attempt against his life in July in Butler, Pa. (Unlike the real Trump, the mannequin’s suit jacket and trousers are mismatched and it is not wearing a tie.)

The mannequin holds a sign urging voters to “Demand a paper ballot!” and tells people “Do not use the ‘express’ machine!!”

Buongiorno said the Trump prop “has proven to be very effective.”

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©2024 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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