Lost Florida voting records found

Can anyone explain what is going on in Florida? Miami-Dade elections officials have now found the records of the 2002 gubernatorial primary that were thought to be lost.

"Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the Elections Supervisor office, said the records were found on a compact disc in the office. 'We are very pleased,' he said."

This points to a complete lack of any sort of accountability for elections records, and that is a management problem. The state should have clear standards and procedures for the handling of elections records (at a minimum for federal and statewide elections records), written into law and enforced. As soon as a ballot is cast, there should be an audit trail accounting for every location and possessor of any ballot record, and there should be procedures in place that make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to bypass that system.

Florida passed new election laws in 2002 (which can be found here.) Among other things, the new laws require that both volative memory and removeable media demonstrate the ability to retain data for six months, but incredibly there is no mention of any requirements for the "chain of custody" of election records!

According to the 1S-2.015 - Minimum Security Procedures for Voting Systems (pdf,97kb) (which can be found here), the state leaves records retention and security decisions in the hands of each county Election Supervisor's office! This is a system fraught with the potential for fraud, corruption and error. Unless the state embodies in law the correct, secure handling of elections records, they have no authority to correct some of the most fundamental errors. Counties should be regularly audited by the state and disciplined for errors in recordkeeping or records retention.

Furthermore, I can find no evidence of any ordinance in Miaim-Dade county that even addresses the issue of ballot security, handling and retention except fot the requirements placed on voters! No wonder records can be "lost" and the "found" a few months later! (It might be revealing to do a study nationwide of the elections records handling and retention approaches of every state.)

The right to vote is the single most sacred right of any citizen. Without it, all other rights become moot. Federal law should require specific standards with regard to the handling, retention and security of all elections for federal office. This would go a long way toward motivating the individual states to move their procedures in to the 21st century.