The Governor's Commission on Electoral Reform should seriously consider two recommended requirements, one dealing with ballot design and the other relating to machine procedures.

 I voted for many years in Maryland, which uses a mechanical lever mechanism, and for a number of years while a resident of Puerto Rico, which uses paper ballots that are evaluated visually.   Both had a fundamentally common ballot design that would be equally compatible in Florida with optical scan systems.

 The recommended design of the ballot would be essentially a matrix, in which the rightmost column would list only the title of those offices up for election, typically with the offices listed in descending order of importance.  The second column from the right would be dedicated to candidates of Party A only, with the heading of the column identifying itself as the Party A column.  The third column from the right would, likewise, be dedicated to candidates of Party B only, similarly with a column heading denoting Party B, and so forth, with a column for each party on the ballot and a final column providing for write-ins.  The names of all candidates for a specific office would appear only on the horizontal line aligned with that office listed in the first column.  However, each candidate's name would be segregated from the names of the other candidates by the vertical lines separating the columns of the political parties, so that each candidate's name would be located in its own cell of the matrix.  Any geometric figure, such as an oval, that the voter may be required to blacken, would be positioned immediately before and adjacent to the candidate's name within the cell, eliminating the need for the voter to attempt to trace from the candidate's name, across the real estate of the ballot, to some circle or oval upon which the voter is required to act.  Never again should there be confusion with respect to the party of the candidates for which one is voting.    

 Any constitutional or other issues subject to voter approval can be included on the ballot to follow the listing of offices and candidates, in whatever format is deemed most appropriate.

 It would be helpful if persons with little understanding of machines or computers would desist from the mantra, 'machines are unbiased'.  That is simply not true.  Depending upon the design, function or current condition, machines can be permanently or temporarily biased.  If the system is required to perform any type of data processing, there is the possibility of software bias as well.

 There needs to be a requirement for every machine intended for use in ballot processing to be tested for mechanical bias prior to approval for use in an election.  This will identify any permanent bias that may exist in the machine, although it would not preclude the minimal probability of a temporary bias that could develop as a function of changing condition during
use.

 If the identical software will be installed in all voting machines, the requirement need be to test the program only once for software bias.  If, however, the software varies from precinct to precinct, as one might expect, each version of the software is required to be tested for bias.

 The implementation of these requirements, in conjunction with the procurement of high reliability hardware, should serve to assure that the types of electoral problems that plagued Florida in the year 2000 will never be repeated.

Senator John McCain has brought campaign finance reform to the front again. McCain has said that he wants this to be the first priority of the new session. G.W. favors campaign reform but not in the McCain-Feingold version and here are the reasons.

Mc-Cain-Feingold supports the removal of soft money form Businesses but Does Not remove the contributions from Organized labor. Organized labor is one of the largest single contributors to the Democratic Party. Bush opposes this because the money paid into the unions by its members is MANDITORY but the membership has no say so in what happens to the money.

In the 2000 election 39 percent of organized labor's members voted for Bush but 100 percent of the unions money went to Gore. So in effect, 39 percent of the union dues, that are mandatory, went to a candidate that the contributors did not support! Just because the union leadership supports one candidate or the other does not mean the membership supports that candidate.

The union members do not have the choice of who gets their percentage of the money for election. They are not given the choice of saying they do not want to contribute to any 
campaign. At least we all have the choice of saying on our Federal tax returns whether we want 1 dollar of our money to go to the election fund or not. This is a group of people being held hostage by the unions just to have a job and then the union forces their political views on this same group of people by taking the members money and giving it to the Unions candidate!

Give up business money but don't give up the union money. Isn't the union a Big business? How many of the unions are controlled by Organized Crime? Remember Jimmy Hoffa!

How about eliminating All Soft Money?

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