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counts.
The only county that has already switched is Sarasota, where voters last year approved a charter amendment requiring a paper-ballot system. More than 18,000 votes cast on touch-screen machines were not recorded in a close Congressional race in the county last year, raising an outcry that hastened the statewide switch to optical scanning.
Sarasota County's touch-screen machines are sequestered under court order while an investigation into last year's election continues. Most of the other counties getting new equipment will ask the state to cart their touch screens away after the presidential primaries.
"I will get them off my hands, one way or the other," Mr. Browning said.
Like many other county election officials, he said he still believed in touch-screen voting, calling it "a very accurate, secure, reliable system." He supports the switch to optical scanners, Mr. Browning said, only because the public no longer trusts touch screens.
"If you were to do a very thorough study of problems with touch screens," he said, "you would probably find that 99.9 percent of them would be traced back to human error."
Public interest groups almost universally supported the move to optical scanning, which is now thought more reliable than touch-screen voting, if only because it leaves a paper trail.
One problem that could persist is poor ballot design, which was responsible for widespread voter confusion in Palm Beach County in 2000 and possibly for the not-recorded votes in Sarasota County last year. Mr. Browning said the state would revise its ballot design rule in time for the presidential election in 2008.
As for the displeasure of election supervisors, Mr. Browning said it was understandable given that for many this would be the third voting system in eight years.
"After a while, you get a little change-weary," he said. "Nothing seems to be stable or constant anymore. But I am very, very hopeful that this is the last major change to voting systems in Florida for some time."
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