Florida county sees a market for voting machines

WEST PALM BEACH - The Florida county at the centre of the hotly disputed United States presidential election may try to cash in on its fame by hawking its outdated voting machines.

Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson says he wants to sell the county's 5000 voting machines as historic souvenirs, with the proceeds helping to pay for a new, modern system.

Palm Beach County, 110km north of Miami, was ground zero in the disputed November 7 election, in part due to its controversial "butterfly ballot" that many voters said caused them to vote for the wrong candidate. Like many other Florida counties, it also used a punchcard system.

Democrats said the Palm Beach ballot design cost Vice President Al Gore thousands of votes, enough to win the election. Gore conceded the election to Texas Governor George W. Bush last week after a US Supreme Court ruling slammed the door on his chances of winning a manual recount of ballots in the crucial state.

"What we have in Palm Beach County is a piece of history. Whether it's good history or bad history, it's history," Aaronson said yesterday. "Let's take the money we can get from this to improve the quality of voting for all voters."

After an agonising 36-day wait for the winner following one of the closest elections in US history, officials in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in Florida suggested that it was time to scrap a technologically ancient voting system.

The punchcard system left Democrats and Republicans scrapping over whether votes were intended or not amid dimpled, pregnant and hanging "chads," the tiny pieces of paper the voters were supposed to punch out and remove from their ballots.

Aaronson's idea seemed popular with commission colleagues.

"I'll buy one for $US2000 ($NZ4700)," commissioner Tony Masilotti said.

Even Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach elections supervisor who designed the butterfly ballot, liked the idea.

"If it's a way to raise money to pay for new voting systems, I would be happy to do that," she said.

Aaronson suggested that the antiquated machines could be auctioned on the internet for $US2000 to $US4000 each, raising up to $US20 million for a new voting system.

The machines could be authenticated with the signatures of the major players in the ballot recount.

Or, he said, the county could donate one machine to the Smithsonian Institute and sell one for a premium price.

"We have collectors for everything," Aaronson said. "This is a piece of American history which hopefully will never, ever, ever be duplicated."

- REUTERS

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