"Pay No Attention ...

to the man behind the curtain."

Not that it comes a surprise, really, but it is nice to know some people are taking the time to actually check. Guess what? There were egregious problems with vote counting in Florida during the November presidential election.

A report released by the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition said during the elections there were "serious problems with policies and procedures that are supposed to protect the integrity of the ballot."

In many precincts, the number of people who signed in to cast votes was not tracked carefully, or in some cases was not compared with the actual number of ballots cast at those precincts.

The group also said there was a touchscreen machine malfunction; when votes were tallied the results from one machine had been counted three times, creating a discrepancy of 171 votes that became part of the certified canvass, the group said.

"It slid right through and nobody caught it," said Martha Mahoney, a professor at University of Miami and a group member.

Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties used touchscreen machines, including most of the heavily populated ones.

Election officials welcomed the criticism and said the machine that gave a 3-for-1 tally has been sent for testing.

"We generally think that the more voices that you have the better off you are," said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the elections office.