PUNCH CARDS WORK WELL HERE

JACKSON, Mo. -- The presidential deadlock in Florida has raised questions about the accuracy of punch-card voting systems nationwide, but Cape Girardeau County Clerk Rodney Miller is confident about his machines.

As the county's chief election official, Miller initiated punch-card voting in the county in 1980. He said Thursday that the system has worked well over the past 20 years, and he doesn't want to go back to paper ballots.

"We have had really good success with it," he said. "Without question, I believe they are more accurate than hand-counting ballots."

In the November election, 30,588 voters cast ballots in Cape Girardeau County. They made their choices by punching holes in rectangular paper cards. The names of the candidates and ballot issues are printed in a hinged booklet that is attached to a mechanical holder into which voters insert their ballots for voting.

The ballots clearly state which way to insert the ballot into the holder.

Miller said there were no problems with the computerized counting machine, which can tabulate 1,000 ballots a minute.

A bipartisan team of election judges that worked in the counting room on election night rejected only two ballots.

Miller said those two ballots had to be discarded prior to the machine counting because there were no holes punched in the cards.

"There was no way to tell how they voted," he said.

During the machine counting, only three or four ballots were found to be damaged or defective, he said.

The machine automatically kicked out each of those ballots. One of the cards had a tear at the bottom, another had some punched holes that may have been slightly off center.

Miller said the election judges in each case took new cards and punched out identical holes to those on the ballots in question and then ran those new cards through the vote counting machine.

In one case, the vote-counting team twice punched out new cards for one ballot. Each time, the machine mysteriously rejected the card. In the end, it was counted by hand.

Election judges reported 346 "spoiled" ballots. Those ballots were ones where voters made errors, such as mistakenly voting for the wrong candidate, and turned their ballots in to the election judges at the polling places, Miller said. Those voters then were given new ballots to punch.

The new ballots were then counted along with the other properly voted ballots. The spoiled ballots in any precinct were kept in an envelope, separate from the properly voted ballots.

Punch-card history

Punch-card systems have been in use since the mid-1960s.

They are among three types of vote-counting systems in use in Missouri. The other two are manual counting and optical scanning systems.

With optical scanning systems, voters fill in circles, squares or ovals with a pen or pencil to mark their votes. A scanner counts the votes by detecting the marks on each ballot.

The Florida vote-counting controversy in this year's presidential election has raised questions about the accuracy of punch-card voting.

Rebecca Mercuri, a visiting professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr College, told the Associated Press that punch-card voting systems have an error rate of 2 to 5 percent.

Concerns have been raised about the chads, the bits of paper punched out of the ballot cards. If they aren't punched out completely, the machine might not read the vote.

But Miller said he wasn't aware of any "hanging chads" in Cape Girardeau County in the past election.

He also disagreed with critics like Mercuri. He said the punch-card system works.

He pointed out that the punch-card system in Cape Girardeau County was tested on the Friday before the election and again on election night before the actual votes were counted. Miller said the punch-card system worked properly in both tests.

Jim Grebing, a spokesman for Secretary of State Bekki Cook, said punch-card systems have proven reliable over the years.

"We just don't hear a lot of problems about the voting systems," he said.

Even when there have been recounts in Missouri in legislative or congressional races where punch-cards were used, the final vote totals have changed little, Grebing said.

Before any type of voting system can be used in Missouri, it must be approved by the secretary of state's office.

"To get voting equipment and counting equipment into the state of Missouri, you have to come through the secretary of state's office," said Grebing. "That is one of the ways we protect the integrity of the election process in the state."

MISSOURI BALLOTING

How voters cast their ballots in Missouri:

* Eleven counties use manual ballots, including Carter, Shannon and Reynolds counties in Southeast Missouri.

* Forty-two counties and the city of St. Louis use punch card systems. The list includes Butler, Cape Girardeau, Pemiscot, Perry, Ste. Genevieve and St. Francois counties in Southeast Missouri.

* Sixty-two counties use optical scanning systems. The list includes Bollinger, Dunklin, Iron, Madison, Mississippi, New Madrid, Ripley, Scott, Stoddard and Wayne in Southeast Missouri.