More election fun in Palm Beach County

The home of the infamous butterfly ballot continues to have problems.

Just one day after Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson announced that Palm Beach County may have to defy the new state law requiring a paper trail for voting because of prohibitive costs, he discovered that, oops, his math was a little off.

It turns out Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson's estimate of $1.25 a page to print optical-scan ballots - a figure that helped launch county commissioners into civil-disobedience mode and caused the state's top elections official to voice disbelief - was more than triple the actual cost, Anderson said Wednesday.

Anderson, slated to discuss his budget again with commissioners next week, said his office is crunching numbers and expects to come up with a "significant reduction" from the preliminary $5.9 million request for county tax money he presented to the commission Tuesday.

The county can get paper ballots printed and delivered for 40 cents a page, said Laurence Davenport, director of business affairs for the elections office, after getting a price quote Wednesday from vendor Sequoia Voting Systems.

That lops $1.36 million off the $2 million printing estimate Anderson gave commissioners the day before.

Anderson also told the board Tuesday he needs $3.9 million worth of new equipment to make the transition from paperless electronic voting to Florida's newly mandated system of paper ballots read by optical scanners. On Wednesday, the elections chief said that figure should come down, but he did not specify an amount.

Whew. Looks like Palm Beach County actually can comply with state law. How nice. I guess we've avoided another laughingstock elections incident ... for now.