The Tampa Bay Tribune, July 10, 2005

Kurt Browning wasn't looking for anything special on the day marking his 30th anniversary with the Pasco County elections office, but surprises are often the spice of life, even within a bureaucracy.

Thus did Browning, Pasco's elections supervisor for the past 24 1/2 of those 30 years, gladly received a welcome alternative to the usual cake and bouquet of balloons: affirmation of what he has been saying since before Florida's pregnant chad crisis of 2000.

Direct recording electronic devices - DREs, or, more commonly, touch-screen voting machines - are, indeed, safe, accurate, reliable, simple, accessible and eminently hacker-proof.

This conclusion, embraced for years by Browning, recently was reached by the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to ideals of freedom, opportunity and individual responsibility through free-market policies.

In "Upgrading America's Ballot Box: The Rise of E-Voting,'' authors Sonia Arrison and Vince Vasquez dismiss as unfounded Internet-fired rumors of conspiracy, fraud and rigged elections tied to touch-screen voting. Like Browning, Arrison and Vasquez lament the hysteria of partisan critics who latched onto misinformation and half-truths as proof that DREs had been programmed to produce a desired result.

``There is no serious research that shows e-voting rigged the results of the [2004] election,'' they wrote. ``Claims by groups such as blackboxvoting.org gloss over the complexities in elections. ... They also ignore the reality that complaints with e-voting machines were negligible.''

Guess Who Really Likes It

The PRI study also says that e- voting has broad appeal among groups with traditional ties to Democrats or otherwise liberal candidates - minorities, the elderly and the disabled - who describe the process as user-friendly.

Across the board, Arrison says, "The electorate likes the convenience and ease of e-voting machines and feels confident in the machines' ability to process and protect votes.''

Alerted to the study, Browning couldn't have been more delighted if staffers had brought in lunch from Kafe Kokopelli. ``It's almost like, `I told you so,' '' he says.

Nonetheless, it bears repeating - if not shouting. That's because a comparatively tiny, but astonishingly noisy and utterly shameless, minority continues to trumpet its unsubstantiated claims in hopes of forcing a radical, unnecessary and potentially harmful redundancy - paper receipt printers - on elections officials through congressional action.

Congressional Mandate Unneeded

Elections Services & Systems, Pasco's voting hardware provider, estimates refitting the county's touch-screen machines would cost as much as $1,000 per unit; with 1,600 machines to rehab, overall cost would run up to $1.6 million. That's not government money. It's yours.

Federal lawmakers should take note that voters have declared their satisfaction with e-voting. In November, the race for Pasco elections supervisor was, essentially, a referendum on the system for which Browning had vouched.

Browning and e-voting prevailed, 83 percent to 17 percent. Now PRI has confirmed the wisdom of Pasco voters. Congress - including Ginny Brown-Waite and Mike Bilirakis - should heed the people.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.