December 07, 2005

"U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler in court appealing electronic voting system decision"

"A year after a federal judge rejected his claim that Florida's paperless electronic voting system is unconstitutional, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, was in an appeals court Wednesday morning trying to get the decision overturned.

A three-judge panel heard arguments that voters in the 15 Florida counties that use touch screens are being denied their constitutional equal-protection rights because their ballots cannot be manually recounted, as is the case with paper ballots in Florida's 52 other counties.

Wexler attorney Robert Peck said being able to manually recount some ballots but not others amounts to the same kind of "arbitrary and disparate treatment" that led the U.S. Supreme Court to halt Florida's 2000 presidential recount.

But Florida Deputy Solicitor General Rick Figlio said that since Florida scrapped punch-card ballots, both touch screen and optical scan systems are "effective" means of recording votes and the differences between them don't raise constitutional issues.

The judges didn't indicate when they would make a decision."

Posted by Randy Riddle at December 7, 2005 10:53 AM