It now goes to Gov. Jeb Bush, who has said he would sign it. The bill requires counties to abandon voting systems that use punch cards, mechanical levers or paper ballots. Instead, by 2002, counties must have in place optical scanners, which require voters fill in bubbles with a pencil. The pencil marks are then read by machines. Many of the state's county election supervisors say they would rather adopt the more advanced systems than spend money on optical scanners.
Optical scanners are a lateral move.
The bill also requires a uniform ballot design statewide and extends the date by which counties must certify their election results by four days. The bill also creates uniform statewide standards for assessing ballots during manual recounts. During the dispute over the 2000 presidential election, Republicans complained that elections officials in each of the state's 67 counties were setting their own standards, which differed from county to county. Equal protection questions raised by the lack of a uniform statewide standard were cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in its December decision that finally brought the Florida election dispute to a conclusion, awarding the state's 25 electoral votes to GOP candidate George W. Bush. An AOL Time Warner Company.