Florida’s Vote-Counting Fiasco: the 2006 Edition

Why did 18,000 phantom votes simply go uncounted? Nobody knows for sure, but the most likely culprit was poor ballot design. On Election Day, voters cast their ballots with the infamous “touch-screen” computer machines manufactured by Election System & Software. On the first screen, voters were told to cast their choice for the statewide U.S. Senate race – where Democrat Bill Nelson defeated Katherine Harris by over one million votes. But then the ballot changed – depending on what part of the district you lived in. If you lived in any other county in Florida’s 13th District, the second screen prominently featured the Congressional race and nothing else – making it highly unlikely for voters there who wanted to cast their choice in that race to miss it. But in Sarasota County, which is the most Democratic part of the 13th District, the second screen had the Congressional race <"news_images/sarasota_ballot.pdf">scrunched above the statewide Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s race – in such a way that allowed many voters to skip it.

Could that particular ballot placement really cause 18,000 voters who intended to vote in the Congressional race to unintentionally miss it? No other race on the ballot in Sarasota County even came close to a 13% rate of abstention, although the Congressional race was highly competitive and generated much media attention. Meanwhile, on the ballot in Charlotte County, the Florida Attorney General’s race was also placed in the same inconspicuous place (directly above the Governor’s race), and it likewise generated a disproportionate number of “under-votes.” But unlike the 13th District Congressional Race, the Attorney General’s race was not decided by a razor-thin margin, and so these obviously uncounted votes did not prove to be decisive.

Republican pundits will inevitably blame the 18,000 voters who abstained, arguing that it’s their own fault that they were not careful enough to cast a vote in every race and double-check their ballots. In fact, that’s exactly what Deborah Saunders wrote back in 2000 about the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County. But in a race where changing the ballot structure could decisively change the outcome of an election, is it fair to blame it on people who tried to exercise their constitutional right? Election results are supposed to reflect the “will of the voters,” and setting up roadblocks such as a confusing ballot is anathema to our very concept of democracy.

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