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Here, I
use the definition of Swing States by the Swing State Project. Please
select your state of interest to proceed. (If there is no link, that
means there is no content for that state yet).
FLORIDA
12/14/04_2 [Permalink]
Some reports in Florida
of electronic voting machines displaying Bush as the voter's choice
when Kerry was selected
Via reader radtimes, here is piece
by David Corn:
Regular readers know
that I've advised the Bush opposition to be cautious in claiming that
the November 2 vote count was rigged in Ohio, Florida or
elsewhere--especially when there is no concrete evidence, just
supposition. But there are plenty of reasons to fret about the overall
integrity of the voting system--particularly when some counties rely
on electronic voting machines that produce no auditable paper trail
and that are manufactured by Diebold, a company that is run by a GOP
fundraiser and that refuses to submit its computer codes for
independent scrutiny. I've just finished another short piece on all
this for The Nation. (I'll post it when it's out.) But today I
received an interesting email from a fellow I do not know, a
62-year-old retired systems programmer living in Palm Beach County. I
cannot vouch for him, but I thought his note is worth sharing. It is
one of the more intriguing emails out of the 100-plus notes I have
received on this subject the past few days. I don't know if he wants
his name publicized, so I have deleted it. Here's the email:
Hi. After reading your article--A Stolen Election?--I am inclined to
share my experience with you.
I witnessed my wife's attempts to vote for Kerry in precinct 1196, St.
Edwards Church, Palm Beach FL 33480. She pushed Kerry at least 3
times, each time a Bush vote displayed. [She] anxiously called me over
and I suggested that she not push so hard on the screen, and push
DIRECTLY on the X for Kerry and it worked. The summary at [the] end
stated a Kerry vote. My machine gave no problems. We voted early, to
go answer phones for the PB county Democratic HQ.
During my stint on PB Dems phones, I answered 2 calls from poll
watchers, relating to VOTER COMPLAINTS: "I Push the Kerry button,
and get a Bush vote." After the first one, I called the Kerry
lawyer pool, and their response was "seems to be happening
everywhere," "poll workers have a procedure to take
offending machine off line, and re-calibrate it." [During] the
2nd call, I relayed the information to "demand a re
calibration."
After thinking about this problem (with 40 years of computer
programming experience), I thought about how to debug a program,
REQUIRING RECALIBRATION enough to make it a STANDARD PROCEDURE. Then
the thought came to me that it may not be a BUG, but a "DESIGN
FEATURE" as we euphemistically call some in the trade. This was a
Sequoia machine, not a (Republican-run) Diebold. If your touch-screen
routine was designed to properly execute when pushed lightly in the
DESIGNATED SPOT, it would be certifiable. If it was pushed elsewhere
or TOO HARD, what would the program do? Perhaps skew to a
"preferred candidate"? Based on proximity to the DESIGNATED
SPOT. Perhaps this was calculated on a pixel basis, and maybe the size
of the finger/footprint. What happens when one pushes farther along
the longer "Kerry" name versus the shorter "Bush"
name? Is the touch-screen map parametrically hard-coded in pixel
ranges, or with a (calculated, possibly volatile) bitmap, which could
be modified by a bug in a clock routine? Or some other routine,
unrelated to voting such as Windows scheduler, or the touch interrupt?
I would feel better about this:
1) if [Palm Beach County] elections commissioner (chairman Theresa
LaPore) had not ruled the no "outsider" can experiment with
the machines, hardware, software, procedures, because "they are
proprietary," AND that "would void the warranty," and
that there "could be no paper trail." I am glad she is gone,
but not soon enough.
2) if I heard ANY (documented or anecdotal) Bush voter complain that
her/his vote was MYSTERIOUSLY changed to a Kerry vote.
3) if the Sequoia machine was debugged to not require recalibration,
and the re-calibration problem was ADEQUATELY explained in the new
version report.
We will never know what code was in that machine while my wife was
voting Nov. 2nd. And whether that code removed itself.
My feeling is that all Bush needed was to get 1 or 2 or more CHANGED
votes from EACH of these machines, allowed by an inattentive voter
neglecting to verify the final summary page, due to time/inattention
problems, or [who] frustratedly let the vote stand without
complaining. Actually I later found out that 175,000 machines were
used in the vote, and the Bush margin (3.5 million) would only require
a swing of 10 votes per machine to be wiped out or 20 per machine to
change an expected Bush loss to win.
This might explain some of the exit poll/verified vote discrepancy, or
why Kerry ONLY got 60% of the Palm Beach County vote (and 64% of
Broward), while San Francisco gave Kerry 85%.
Regards, Bob
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not
simpler." -- A. Einstein
I am not trying to bolster the case made by others that Bush won
because someone rigged the voting machines. And it's not surprising to
me that Kerry did better in San Francisco than Palm Beach. But Bob's
note raises important issues about the use of touch-screen machines.
Why did some record the wrong vote? Why did they have to be
recalibrated? More importantly, who is out there to investigate the
operations of these machines and credibly verify their operations? The
answers to Bob's questions and suspicions should be easily determined.
But voting, in a way, has been outsourced to private companies. The
message to the vendors ought to be: no open-source code, no contract.
Voting ought to occur in private; vote-counting should be a public
act.
12/14/04 [Permalink]
Election Protection
volunteers report possible undercounting of votes in a Florida county
Via reader LV, this report in the Newport
News Times:
The
south Lincoln County couple flew to Florida on Oct. 29, and came back
November 3. "We were assigned," Betts said, "to
precinct 162, which people there called 'Little Haiti.' The
demographics," he said, showed more than a thousand people
registered as voters. The poll worker who opened the doors in that
precinct told Betts the precinct had 1,080 registered voters.
According to the information from Election Protection, Betts said, it
was closer to 1,300.
The breakdown Betts and Scarborough received from Election Protection
showed 818 Black (i.e., mostly Haitian) voters; 172 Hispanics (none,
he added, Cuban-Americans), 47 white, and an unidentified 117
"other" category voters. It was a predictably Democratic
district.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. and, said Betts, "I shook hands with
the first lady in line. She smiled broadly at me. At one point, there
were three very elderly ladies, walking with walkers," he
recalled, and "I saw they were leaving the polling area without
the 'I Voted' sticker polling officials give people after they have
voted. So I asked them why they were leaving, and one of the ladies
said they had been waiting too long, their knees hurt and they
couldn't stand and wait any more. So I went to the poll worker who had
opened the doors at 7 and explained what was happening, and could they
let these elderly women come in ahead of the younger voters to
vote?"
That was done and, Betts said, "one of the other poll workers,
with a heavy Creole accident, told me, 'You're a good man, doin' that
for them old ladies.'"
Aside from that, Betts said, "There were no incidents, no
problems."
The poll worker who had opened the doors in the told Betts at about 4
p.m. there had been "over 800 people who'd voted." And,
Betts said carefully, "She explained that starting after 5, until
about 7, about another quarter of the voters come in, after work, to
vote." That would mean a total of 1,000 or more voters in the
precinct.
But when the results came out, Betts continued, the official vote was
given as 535 total votes cast.
That didn't fit right, Betts felt. "How did they get down to 535
people voting there?" he asked.
"There is," he continued, "not much you can do about
it. There was no paper trail. The only way to verify this would be to
check the voter rolls and see the number of people who were checked
off" as having come to the polling place and voted.
"And that still would not prove anything," he noted.
"The county there could say maybe they didn't vote for
president."
Betts had to stay non-partisan, but he explained he was still able to
ask people questions even though he could not advocate for any
candidate.
"I talked to about half the people voting," he recalls.
"I can recall talking to about six or eight people who said they
voted for Bush," and many times that number who said they voted
for Kerry. "In Haiti," he said, "the country was in
chaos around the time of the ouster of Aristide as president there. A
lot of the people I talked to were really angry about the ouster of
Aristide, and more about the Bush administration's delay, of two or
three weeks, before sending in security personnel to restore
order."
But it is not the fact that 10 percent (55 voters) were officially
recorded as voting for Bush. "Maybe they did," he says. It
was the fact that half of the heavily Democratic precinct officially
never showed up to vote, even though the leading poll worker told him
far more than half had voted even before the after-work rush had
begun.
"I don't know any way that precinct could have turned out only
535 votes all together," Betts said. "Not when the poll
watcher had said there were 800 voting even before 5 came."
11/20/04 [Permalink]
Black Box Voting (BBV)
finds poll tape copies in the garbage, poll tape discrepancies, and
hostile officials in Volusia County, Florida; officials say BBV is
comparing apples to oranges in reporting a discrepancy and that
legally, they don't have to keep the copies (that were found in the
trash)
Black
Box Voting filed this report:
TUESDAY NOV 16 2004:
Volusia County on lockdown
County election
records just got put on lockdown
Dueling lawyers,
election officials gnashing teeth, Votergate.tv
film crew catching it all.
Here's what happened
so far:
Friday Black Box
Voting investigators Andy Stephenson and Kathleen Wynne popped in to
ask for some records. They were rebuffed by an elections official
named Denise. Bev Harris called on the cell phone from
investigations in downstate Florida, and told Volusia County
Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe that Black Box Voting would be in
to pick up the Nov. 2 Freedom of Information request, or would file
for a hand recount. "No, Bev, please don't do that!" Lowe
exclaimed. But this is the way it has to be, folks. Black Box
Voting didn't back down.
Monday Bev, Andy and
Kathleen came in with a film crew and asked for the FOIA request.
Deanie Lowe gave it over with a smile, but Harris noticed that one
item, the polling place tapes, were not copies of the real ones, but
instead were new printouts, done on Nov. 15, and not signed by
anyone.
Harris asked to see
the real ones, and they said for "privacy" reasons they
can't make copies of the signed ones. She insisted on at least
viewing them (although refusing to give copies of the signatures is
not legally defensible, according to Berkeley elections attorney,
Lowell Finley). They said the real ones were in the County Elections
warehouse. It was quittin' time and an arrangment was made to come
back this morning to review them.
Lana Hires, a Volusia
County employee who gained some notoriety in an election 2000
Diebold memo, where she asked for an explanation of minus
16,022 votes for Gore, so she wouldn't have to stand there
"looking dumb" when the auditor came in, was particularly
unhappy about seeing the Black Box Voting investigators in the
office. She vigorously shook her head when Deanie Lowe suggested
going to the warehouse.
Kathleen Wynne and
Bev Harris showed up at the warehouse at 8:15 Tuesday morning, Nov.
16. There was Lana Hires looking especially gruff, yet surprised.
She ordered them out. Well, they couldn't see why because there she
was, with a couple other people, handling the original poll tapes.
You know, the ones with the signatures on them. Harris and Wynne
stepped out and Volusia County officials promptly shut the door.
There was a trash bag
on the porch outside the door. Harris looked into it and what do you
know, but there were poll tapes in there. They came out and glared
at Harris and Wynne, who drove away a small bit, and then videotaped
the license plates of the two vehicles marked 'City Council' member.
Others came out to glare and soon all doors were slammed.
So, Harris and Wynne
went and parked behind a bus to see what they would do next. They
pulled out some large pylons, which blocked the door. Harris decided
to go look at the garbage some more while Wynne videotaped. A man
who identified himself as "Pete" came out and Harris
immediately wrote a public records request for the contents of the
garbage bag, which also contained ballots -- real ones, but not
filled out.
A brief tug of war
occurred, tearing the garbage bag open. Harris and Wynne then looked
through it, as Pete looked on. He was quite friendly.
Black Box Voting
collected various poll tapes and other information and asked if they
could copy it, for the public records request. "You won't be
going anywhere," said Pete. "The deputy is on his
way."
Yes, not one but two
police cars came up and then two county elections officials, and
everyone stood around discussing the merits of the "black
bag" public records request.
The police finally
let Harris and Wynne go, about the time the Votergate.tv film crew
arrived, and everyone trooped off to the elections office. There,
the plot thickened.
Black Box Voting
began to compare the special printouts given in the FOIA request
with the signed polling tapes from election night. Lo and behold,
some were missing. By this time, Black Box Voting
investigator Andy Stephenson had joined the group at Volusia County.
Some polling place tapes didn't match. In fact, in one location,
precinct 215, an African-American precinct, the votes were off by
hundreds, in favor of George W. Bush and other Republicans.
Hmm. Which was right?
The polling tape Volusia gave to Black Box Voting, specially
printed on Nov. 15, without signatures, or the ones with signatures,
printed on Nov. 2, with up to 8 signatures per tape?
Well, then it became
even more interesting. A Volusia employee boxed up some items from
an office containing Lana Hires' desk, which appeared to contain --
you guessed it -- polling place tapes. The employee took them to the
back of the building and disappeared.
Then, Ellen B., a
voting integrity advocate from Broward County, Florida, and Susan,
from Volusia, decided now would be a good time to go through the
trash at the elections office. Lo and behold, they found all kinds
of memos and some polling place tapes, fresh from Volusia elections
office.
So, Black Box
Voting compared these with the Nov. 2 signed ones and the
"special' ones from Nov. 15 given, unsigned, finding several of
the MISSING poll tapes. There they were: In the garbage.
So, Wynne went to the
car and got the polling place tapes she had pulled from the
warehouse garbage. My my my. There were not only discrepancies, but
a polling place tape that was signed by six officials.
This was a bit
disturbing, since the employees there had said that bag was destined
for the shredder.
By now, a county
lawyer had appeared on the scene, suddenly threatening to charge Black
Box Voting extra for the time spent looking at the real stuff
Volusia had withheld earlier. Other lawyers appeared, phoned, people
had meetings, Lana glowered at everyone, and someone shut the door
in the office holding the GEMS server.
Black Box Voting
investigator Andy Stephenson then went to get the Diebold
"GEMS" central server locked down. He also got the memory
cards locked down and secured, much to the dismay of Lana. They were
scattered around unsecured in any way before that.
Everyone agreed to
convene tomorrow morning, to further audit, discuss the hand count
that Black Box Voting will require of Volusia County, and of
course, it is time to talk about contesting the election in Volusia.
Via reader
radtimes, a report in the Orlando
Sentinel on this:
Harris,
whose meeting with Volusia officials Tuesday was recorded by
videographers working on a documentary called Votergate, wouldn't
reveal the names of all the counties her group is focusing on first,
though she confirmed she is scheduled to get information from St.
Lucie County today.
The
filmmakers also taped Harris' supporters finding documents from
Election Supervisor Deanie Lowe's office in the trash. Lowe said the
documents were duplicates of precinct-based reports poll workers
printed after the polls closed on Election Day.
Lowe
said she's not required by law to keep the duplicates and that she
has the
originals.
In
Volusia, Harris is citing apparent discrepancies such as
precinct-based Election
Day results that differ from last week's final tally as reasons to
scrutinize the county's ballots and voting equipment.
But
Lowe said it's not logical to expect those sets of numbers to add up
because the final tally includes such categories of ballots as
absentee and provisional.
"You've
got to compare apples to apples if you expect to come up with a
bushel of apples," Lowe said. County Judge Steven deLaroche, a
member of Volusia's elections canvassing board, said it seems Black
Box Voting is on a fishing expedition in the wrong county.
After all, Volusia had to count its ballots twice -- once on
Election Day, and then a close judicial race prompted an automatic
recount. They checked out.
In
Tuesday's meeting, Lowe offered to let Black Box Voting inspect
ballots from three precincts at no charge if it wanted to compare
the paper ballots with the precinct-based reports from
optical-scanning machines.
Harris
asked to inspect ballots from 50 precincts because those are the
ones she suspects have problems, based on her initial review of the
paperwork she got this week from Volusia County.
But
Lowe said Harris couldn't inspect that many for free. The estimated
cost, mainly to pay for two county employees and security, won't be
known until Harris tells Lowe which specific precincts she wants to
inspect.
11/16/04 [Permalink]
268 uncounted absentee
ballots "discovered" in the office of Pinellas county that
Bush "won" by 226 votes - after county formally certified
results. This is not new - similar incident in 2000 resulted in County
changing final tally in favor of Al Gore. These are not the only
incidents that County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark has become
infamous for.
Via edverb
at Dailykos, here is a report in the St.
Petersburg Times (bold text is my emphasis):
The unmarked brown
box sat unnoticed in the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections office
until Monday, two weeks after the election, when an employee
cleaning a desk stumbled upon it.
Inside were 268
uncounted absentee ballots.
"I think this is
a very serious situation," Supervisor of Elections Deborah
Clark said Monday, vowing to fire or discipline any employee found
to be negligent.
"I assume all
responsibility for everything that happened in that department, but
I have to rely on other people," Clark said. "It's not a
one-woman show."
The unmarked box
wasn't the only problem.
Five days ago,
Clark sent the state the county's final results for the Nov. 2
election. But her office had failed to perform a standard check to
ensure that all ballots had been accounted for.
Clark assumed her
staff had performed the check, but they had not.
Now she will ask
the state for permission to change Pinellas' official results. The
canvassing board will count the missing ballots Thursday.
Although it is
numerically possible, officials say the missing ballots probably
won't change any results. Only a few races were decided by less than
268 votes - including the presidential contest.
George W. Bush won
the presidential race in Pinellas by just 226 votes. While Bush's
margin in Pinellas could change, his statewide victory won't.
A city commission
seat in South Pasadena and a referendum in Indian Rocks Beach were
also decided by fewer than 268 votes.
"If you found a
couple hundred thousand votes in Ohio, that might be exciting,"
said Paul Bedinghaus, chairman of the Pinellas Republican Party.
"I expect that human error will continue to occur as long as
human beings are involved."
This is the third
time since Clark became election supervisor in 2000 that her office
has had problems handling ballots.
In the
presidential race in 2000, the office neglected to count 1,400
ballots - and counted more than 900 ballots twice. In 2001, her
office misplaced six absentee ballots in a Tarpon Springs city
election.
The uncounted
absentee ballots this time came from the St. Petersburg election
office.
Election workers
there put absentee ballots in a box to be delivered to the election
service center in Largo, where they would be counted on Election
Day.
That afternoon, a
staff courier delivered the box from St. Petersburg to Largo.
Clark said her
office has a system to track the boxes, but she could not describe
it in detail during a phone interview from her home Monday night.
The box arrived at
the election office, where it sat in plain sight in the absentee
ballot department for 14 days.
Office spokeswoman
Lori Hudson said other boxes and papers were piled on top of the
box. The ballot box was not marked in any unique way. Clark could
not say Monday why the box was not specially marked.
Voters, accustomed to
putting punch card ballots in locked metal boxes, had been uneasy
when they saw election officials throw absentee ballots in a brown
box in the St. Petersburg office, said Democratic lawyer Peter
Wallace.
Even before
Election Day, missing ballots had caused embarrassment for another
election supervisor. Hillsborough Supervisor of Election Buddy
Johnson had been criticized in October after his staff lost 245
ballots in the Aug. 31 primary.
Normally, Clark would
have detected the missing ballots when her staff checked to ensure
that every ballot was accounted for.
Usually, every
ballot, whether filed absentee or at a polling place, is registered
into a computer system. After the election, workers compare the
number recorded in the computer to the number of ballots.
For some reason,
the staff did not perform the procedure.
Clark learned about
the missing ballots on Monday afternoon. Clark did not return to the
office because she said she needed to be with her husband, who is
having surgery.
Her staff, though,
worked past 5 p.m. She promised a thorough investigation.
"If we determine
that this is the result of negligence, then those responsible will
be held accountable," Clark said. "I can assure you of
that."
As edverb
at Dailykos also notes:
A quick Google search
of Mrs. Clark comes up with several oddities, and a potential
conflict-of-interest -- the county election
supervisor's husband was employed by voting machine manufacturer
ES&S, who was awarded over $400,000 in sales of their voting
equipment to the county.
While Deborah Clark
worked as a top official in the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections
Office, her husband's employer was awarded more than $400,000 in
business with the office.
Now, Clark heads
the office, and that company, Elections Systems & Software, is
a leading contender to land a lucrative contract -- worth as much
as $15-million -- to sell new voting machines to Pinellas County,
records show.
Clark said
Wednesday evening she sees no conflict of interest, and pointed
out that the contracts were handled by her predecessor.
The above article
goes on to mention that Clark's deputy is also connected by family
ties to the voting machine manufacturer.
To complicate matters,
Clark's deputy administrator, Karen Butler, is the sister of
Sandra Mortham, Florida's former secretary of state and now a
lobbyist for ES&S before the state Legislature. Butler is one
of more than a dozen senior staff members helping to evaluate
competing systems, but she told the Times that family ties won't
matter.
In 2002, many
voters were given the wrong ballots, possibly swinging the
election for the fire commissioner.
Pinellas County
elections officials said human error was to blame for
more than 600 voters getting the wrong ballot in Tuesday's
election.
Election workers
mislabeled machines that activate the cards Pinellas voters
insert into touch-screen voting machines to display their ballots.
The mislabeled
activators in five precincts caused 633 voters in
unincorporated Lealman, between St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park,
to get
ballots with referendum questions from those cities rather than
the Lealman
fire commission race, officials said.
The problem could
have affected the outcome of a fire commission race
decided by 582 votes, officials said.
"Obviously I
feel terrible about it,'' said Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark.
"We've already changed our internal procedures to check
activators more than
once.''
The problem was
fixed early in four of the precincts. But it wasn't caught until
late in the day at the fifth, where 444 voters got the wrong
ballot and had no
chance to vote for fire commissioner.
Despite the
confusion, officials certified the election.
In the 2000
presidential election, the county was initially called for Bush,
until discoveries led to a significant swing -- subtracting
61 erroneous votes for Bush and adding 417 missing votes for Gore
-- putting the county in the Gore
column.
Pinellas County, which
includes St. Petersburg, will have to redo its count because a
poll worker inadvertently failed to run an unknown number of
ballots through its computer Wednesday, county Supervisor of
Elections Deborah Clark said. The county retracted its original
announcement that Gore had gained 404 votes and Bush dropped by 61
votes in its recount.
11/12/04 [Permalink]
In Florida, electronic
voting machines subtracted about 70,000 votes from vote totals in
Broward County and by about 8400 in Orange county
Via BradBlog,
we have this report in the Miami
Herald:
Broward County
corrected a computer glitch Thursday that had miscounted thousands
of absentee votes, instantly turning a slot-machine measure from
loser to winner and reinforcing concerns about the accuracy of
electronic election returns.
The bug, discovered
two years ago but never fixed, began subtracting votes after the
absentee tally hit 32,500 -- a ceiling put in place by the software
makers.
''Clearly it's a
concern about the integrity of the voting system,'' said Broward
County Mayor Ilene Lieberman, a canvassing board member who was
overseeing the count. ``This glitch needs to be fixed immediately.''
The problem, which
resulted in the shocking discovery of about 70,000 votes for
Amendment 4, a measure allowing a referendum on Las Vegas-style
slots at parimutuels in Miami-Dade and Broward, came to light just
after midnight Wednesday when Broward's canvassing board shut down.
Lieberman, Supervisor
of Elections Brenda Snipes and several lawyers on both sides of the
gambling amendment noticed votes suddenly disappearing on Amendment
4.
The problem was
quickly traced to software in what is known as the central
tabulation machine, a computer that collects data from optical
scanners that read the individual mail-in ballots.
Besides reversing the
Election Night outcome on a controversial gambling question, the
error spurred finger-pointing and provided more ammo for critics of
high-tech voting.
Another report from Orange County via Votersunite:
Sometimes the problem
is that votes were miscounted. That's what happened, officials say,
with precinct-by-precinct results posted on the Orange County
elections office Web site showing that Democrat John Kerry beat
Republican President Bush by 9,227 votes in Orange.
That was off by 8,400
votes. Officials working for Bill Cowles, the Orange elections
supervisor, said the correct totals, available elsewhere on the
site, showed that Kerry bested Bush in the county by only 827 votes.
The cause of the
error, Orange officials said Thursday, was a software program that
could not tabulate more than 32,767 votes in a single precinct. On
election night, officials anticipated the problem and adjusted for
it, deputy election official Lonn Fluke said Thursday.
But the next day,
workers failed to account for the glitch while posting precinct
results online. When absentee-ballot totals exceeded the limit in
one precinct, the software caused additional votes to be subtracted
from Bush's total.
A similar discrepancy
affected vote totals posted online for the U.S. Senate race between
Republican Mel Martinez and Democrat Betty Castor. But neither
online counting problem made it into the real totals sent to
Tallahassee, election officials insist.
"The election
results we certified to the state are correct," Fluke said. The
presidential and U.S. Senate absentee results posted online were
"garbage."
Neither miscount was
enough to influence Bush's or Martinez's Florida victories. But the
conflicting data was not removed from the Web site until Thursday.
Similar counting
problems were reported in Broward County and in Greensboro, N.C.
11/2/04_3 [Permalink]
Democratic voters in
Florida receive fraudulent calls claiming they need to go to a
different polling location
Via Campaign
Desk, here is a report in The
Daily Commercial:
Voters who received
calls over the past few days saying their precincts have been moved
should pay no heed, election officials said, and should go to their
previously assigned precincts. The calls are part of what appears to
be an organized misinformation campaign, officials said.
“It’s
criminal,” said Lake County Supervisor of Elections Emogene
Stegall. “It’s the most terrible thing. I have never seen
anything like this happen here.”
Stegall’s office
received calls Monday afternoon from four concerned residents, all
receiving the same automated message on their answering machines.
The message told the voters their precincts had changed and they
should go to a different location, one which Stegall said does not
exist.
All of the calls,
said Stegall, were made to registered Democrats. The complaints came
from all over the county.
While the four
complaints came in rapid succession, calls from confused voters were
coming in all morning. It wasn’t until a certain number of voters
asked questions about a precinct being moved that election officials
realized this was an attempt to suppress turnout, Stegall said.
Sumter County
Supervisor of Elections Karen Krauss got one similar complaint
Monday. A Lindon voter, also a registered Democrat, had someone call
her in person and tell her that the Lindon location was closed. The
voter called Krauss to check, and Krauss informed her the Lindon
location would remain open and that the voter should go there.
“The various groups
are out there starting to do things, and it’s really sad,”
Krauss said. “We have no way to know how much of this is organized
efforts and how much is done by lone rangers.”
The Lake County
Sheriff’s Office is now investigating the calls. Stegall said she
does not know if this is a local effort or a larger effort organized
by a statewide group or an out-of-state organization. Florida is
considered a pivotal state in today’s presidential election, and
polls all show the race within the margin of error.
Stegall said a change
in polling locations would not be made so close to an election. In
the event that polling sites are moved, all affected voters are sent
a notification by mail. Voters should go to their assigned precinct
as shown on their voter identification cards, Stegall said.
Any Lake County voter
who does not know where their polling location is may call 343-9734,
Stegall said. Sumter voters may call Krauss’s office at 793-0230.
TAPPED
has a note as well:
SECOND SOURCE
EDITION.
Reporting from West Palm Beach for CNN, Gary Tuchman just
confirmed what Nick mentioned
earlier about a barrage of automated phone calls in Florida last
night telling people their polling places had changed, causing
large-scale confusion and the phone lines at election supervisors'
offices getting jammed with questions throughout this morning.
11/2/04_2 [Permalink]
Older News:
Non-partisan voter registration drive illegally blocked in Florida and
decision reversed after court order
Via PFAW/NAACP,
here is a report:
Officials
in Miami Beach, Florida,
in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, blocked a
voter registration drive for new citizens, citing crowd control and
public safety issues.[i]
In August, John C.
Shewairy, Chief of Staff to the District Director of Homeland
Security, informed Mi Familia Vota (MFV), a nonpartisan voter
registration project run by the Center for Immigrant Democracy in
conjunction with People For the American Way Foundation, that they
would no longer be allowed to conduct voter registration drives on
the sidewalks just outside the Miami Beach Convention Center at the
conclusion of naturalization ceremonies.
Mi Familia Vota attempted to solve the issue without resorting to
litigation, but when Mr. Shewairy refused to respond to their
requests and Miami Beach officials denied MFV access to the public
sidewalks in front of the convention center in September, the
organization went to federal court seeking an injunction. The judge
issued an injunction restraining DHS and Miami Beach officials from
prohibiting MFV's registration drive.[ii]
[i] Nicole White, “Voter Group
May Sign Up New Citizens,” The Miami Herald, 9/17/04
[ii] People
for the American Way press release, "Nonpartisan Voter Reg
Group Sues Homeland Security, City of Miami Beach over Denial of
Access to New Citizens," 9/15/04 & Adalberto Jordan,
"Center for Immigrant Democracy vs. John C. Shewairy,"
CASE NO. 04-22326-CIV -JORDAN, 9/16/04
11/2/04_1
[Permalink]
GOP demands that
Democratic volunteers in Florida speak to non-English (Creole)
speaking Haitian-American early voters in English only, claiming that
the volunteers are "threatening" the voters. Democratic
volunteers deny this and point out that they were responding to
requests of help from the voters (confirmed independently).
Via PFAW/NAACP
report a story in the Miami
Herald:
Republicans and
Democrats are accusing each other of intimidating and harassing
Haitian-American voters at early voting polling sites in Miami-Dade
County.
In Little Haiti,
Democratic activists say Republican observers are demanding that
community volunteers speak English when assisting Creole-speaking
voters.
Republicans counter
that Kerry-Edwards supporters are pressuring voters inside the
polling place at the Lemon City Library.
In North Miami, a
prominent Haitian-American activist said GOP observers tried to kick
her out of the North Miami Library, where fellow Haitian-American
voters were soliciting her help with the ballot questions.
Republicans,
including Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, said
the Democrats were the ones who overstepped the bounds.
''We'd be happy if it
was just soliciting,'' said Manuel Iglesias, chairman of the
Bush-Cheney legal team in Miami-Dade.
'Voters are being
threatened, with activists saying, `We're going to tell the Aristide
people that you're voting for Bush.' ''
Former Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was forced from office on Feb.
29, has claimed that he was ''kidnapped'' by the Bush
administration. The administration vehemently denies the accusation.
Iglesias said the
political activists are allowed inside the polling site because
Florida law that bars them from within 50 feet of a poll's entrance
on Election Day doesn't apply during early voting.
Seth Kaplan, a
spokesman for the Miami-Dade County elections department, said all
Miami-Dade poll workers have been told to obey the 50-foot rule. But
he acknowledges that problems have popped up with poll watchers who
enter the voting areas.
Kerry supporters at
the government center on Thursday denied intimidating anyone.
''We got here this
morning for a rally in support of the minimum wage amendment, then
the Bush-Cheney people showed up. Tell me who's intimidating whom?''
asked Delores Turner, president of the Miami board of ACORN.
Haitian-American
activists on both sides of the political aisle say the problem is
simple: There are not enough Creole-speaking elections volunteers
working the polling sites to assist voters.
Even though ballot
questions are in Creole, some cannot understand the questions
because they are illiterate in the language. As a result, voters are
seeking help from volunteers, some of whom are Democratic activists.
Carline Paul, a
former Miami-Dade teacher, said GOP observers tried to boot her out
of the North Miami Library after accusing her of soliciting voters.
She denied it.
10/28/04 [Permalink]
UPDATED 11/16/04
Tens of thousands of
absentee ballots go missing in Florida - adding to jeopardy that many
votes will not get counted; internal postal service e-mail confirms
that at least some absentee ballots were mishandled despite earlier
denials by Florida officials. Additionally, outrageous absentee ballot
delays in Broward County - ballots mailed OUT only on 10/30. Hundreds
of voters disenfranchised. Simply
Appalling has this update (via Buzzflash):
Broward County, Florida,
has just announced
that it is resending some 76,000 absentee ballots. Some 56,000
ballots, asserted by the Elections Office to have been mailed on
October 7-8, have not been received.
What happened to
56,000 ballots demands a thorough investigation. It's difficult to
imagine such a large mailing "lost" without some criminal
activity. But the investigation will have to wait until after the
election.
In the meantime,
those missing ballots are a real threat to the outcome of the
Florida election. For some—home-bound people and travelers—the
absentee ballot is a must. But of the total requests, this group
does not represent the greater portion.
The majority have
requested the ballots as a convenience or as insurance that their
vote is counted. So can they just go to the polls and vote?
Not
exactly.
[I]f a voter has
received an absentee ballot and has not sent it back, they must
hand it over to election officials before they can vote on
Election Day.
Since you can't
return what you haven't received, I made a call to a Florida
Supervisor of Election's office to find out what the procedure is
for the voter who cannot return his/her absentee ballot. It is this:
a poll worker at the precinct must call in to the Elections
office to verify that no ballot has been received before the voter
may proceed to vote. Even a few thousand such calls would
overwhelm any system in the state!
If the Broward
Elections office mailed the ballots on or before October 8, as it
says, and if the U.S. Postal Service hasn't been able to deliver
them by now, I can't be optimistic that this second batch will be
delivered on time.
If you are a Florida
resident and have requested a ballot that you haven't received, I
would urge you to vote before November 2.
Turneresq
at Dailykos notes this
AP story which says that only some ballots will be re-shipped:
With voters jamming
phone lines saying they haven’t received absentee ballots in the
mail, elections officials planned to mail out thousands of replacement
ballots.
As
election workers and the U.S. Postal Service traded the blame
Wednesday, Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes moved
to solve the problem with less than a week left before the
presidential election by sending duplicates to people who had not
returned the original ballot.
Attention
focused on a batch of 58,000 Broward ballots given to the Postal
Service on Oct. 7-8. Though some voters have completed and returned
ballots mailed those days, hundreds of others have called to
complain their forms have not arrived. It was unclear how many
absentee ballots were affected.
“This
isn’t a blame game,” Snipes told The Miami Herald. “What
we’re concentrating on is getting the ballots to the voter.” She
was named to the job by Gov. Jeb Bush after the 2000 elections
supervisor quit during the bitter presidential vote recount and her
replacement was suspended for bungling.
Snipes
estimated she would resend no more than 20,000 ballots, but about
76,000 ballots sent by her office have not been returned. Overnight
mail was to be used to send new ballots to voters living outside the
county, such as college students.
Via reader radtimes, an update in the Sun-Sentinel:
The same day postal
officials publicly denied responsibility for 58,000 missing absentee
ballots, an internal e-mail sent by the South Florida District Manager
to his employees expressed concern that his staff was not handling
ballots within the region properly.
In the memorandum sent on Oct. 26, Butch Parker also told his
employees that staff seemed unaware of the procedures that should be
taken when handling ballots.
"As of today, we have supervisors and employees that state they
have never been made aware of the procedures to be used," Parker
wrote to his employees. "We continue to find absentee ballots
mixed in with other classes of mail."
The e-mail stated that absentee ballots with improper postage sat idle
in postal facilities, instead of being returned to their sender.
Although the ballots soon began trickling into elections officials,
countless other voters continued to complain that they had not
received the ballots they requested, or that they arrived weeks after
requesting them.
Postal officials downplayed the e-mail on Thursday, saying Parker
merely meant to stress proper procedure, said Earl C. Artis, Jr., a
spokesman for the Postal Service.
"It was an effort to make certain that every manager was checking
and double checking mail at their facility to ensure that we had
processed and delivered every absentee ballot we had received,"
he said Thursday.
The same day the e-mail was sent out, Postal Service officials said
they were not to blame for the backlog.
Lojo
at Dailykos has this additional news (bold text is my emphasis):
Depressing story (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10059493.htm)
about problems in Broward in today's Miami Herald. Broward is
a Dem county that just keeps on screwing up (elections). Here's the
money quote.
"The Broward
election office took about 2,500 absentee ballots -- some heading to
addresses in Ohio, Arkansas and Nevada -- to the post office
Saturday afternoon for regular delivery.
''We work miracles
around here, but this is really asking a lot,'' said Gerry McKiernan,
a U.S. Postal Service spokesman, adding that he did not know exactly
how many were going out of town."
Reader radtimes sends in this
article:
Odile Dumas' daughter
Monique, a student at Howard University in Washington D.C., was so
anxious to vote that back in September she requested an absentee
ballot from Palm Beach County in Florida. On Friday, just five days
before the election, when her ballot still hadn't arrived, she
called her mother Odile in a panic. Odile immediately went to the
Supervisor of Elections office to get her daughter's ballot and
Federal Express it to her. But the lines were too long and she had
to get to work. So she returned on Saturday and took her place on
line. "My black ancestors were jailed and killed for trying to
vote," said Odile. "The least I can do is stand in line so
that my daughter can vote." Odile's patience turned to
exasperation, however, when the 8-hour wait meant that she had
missed the deadline for Federal Express and the wait was all for
naught. "My daughter has just lost her right to vote,"
said Odile. "Is this the democracy we fought for?"
Odile was not alone
in her frustration. Also on line was Shelly Marcus, trying to get an
absentee ballot that her son Joshua, a student at Emory College, had
requested on September 11. "My son is 18 and this was his first
opportunity to vote for president. I'm ashamed that once again, Palm
Beach can't get it right." Gregory Berman, who waited on line
for 8 hours and 40 minutes to get an absentee ballot for his
90-year-old father in a nursing home, was furious. "No one in
America should have to wait 8 hours to vote, and certainly not to
get an absentee ballot that the county was supposed to send out long
ago. What you are witnessing here in Palm Beach County is democracy
in crisis-again."
Welcome to Palm Beach
County, home in 2000 of the infamous butterfly ballots, "Jews
for Buchanan", and hanging chads. The
infamous Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore was voted out of
office in this past August - but unfortunately her term doesn't
end until January. That gives her an opportunity to muck up one more
election as her parting salvo. And before election day has even
arrived, it looks like she's succeeding.
In both Palm Beach
County and neighboring Broward County, run by a Democratic
Supervisor, there have been a record number of requests for absentee
ballots-mostly from the elderly, disabled, voters living outside the
county, and people who don't trust the new paperless voting
machines. Both counties have been flooded by complaints from people
who never received their ballots. In Broward, when the media
reported that 58,000 absentee ballots seemed to have
"disappeared," Supervisor Brenda Snipes opened up an
emergency center to field calls, brought in volunteers to call all
21,000 out-of-town voters, and overnighted thousands of ballots with
prepaid overnight return envelopes. Here in Palm Beach County,
Theresa LePore's constituents had no comparable support.
UPDATE 11/16/04
Via Votersunite,
here is a report in the Palm
Beach Post:
Despite a change to
Florida law made after the 2000 election that allows anyone to vote
absentee, many of the laws that govern mail-in ballots didn't
anticipate how widely they would be used and the challenges large
counties would face in case of a crush of absentee requests.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood, the state's top elections official,
did not respond to several requests for an interview for this story.
State Sen. Ron Klein,
D-Delray Beach, has plans to change the system, in anticipation of
even heavier future use. He calls the problems that occurred a
disaster.
Outgoing Palm Beach
County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore calls the massive demand
an anomaly and cautions legislators against crafting
shoot-from-the-hip remedies. She believes lawmakers could create new
problems by tinkering with the laws that were written to solve the
problems of the 2000 election, she said.
Klein's complaints
begin with voters unable to confirm the status of their request for
an absentee ballot. Many of them requested a ballot online but said
they couldn't confirm whether their request was processed. When
their ballot didn't arrive, they called their elections office,
which had no record of their request. In some cases, by the time
they realized a ballot wasn't on its way, it was too late.
"There should be
a system of verification and receipt no different from when you buy
a movie ticket at Muvico," Klein said.
Hundreds of voters
— including Klein's son, a student at the University of Michigan
— couldn't vote because their early orders for ballots
disappeared. Though elections supervisors blamed postal workers for
delays getting ballots to voters on time, Klein doesn't.
"Direct mail is
done in the billions of parcels each year," the state Senate
minority leader said.
10/26/04
[Permalink] UPDATED
10/31/04
Florida GOP and the
Bush-Cheney campaign continue attempts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida
using evolving methods
A GOP "caging List" of voters in a
minority rich district was discovered and suspected to be a vote
challenge list. Its use for vote challenges exposed as possibly
illegal, the GOP claimed they will challenge lots of voters but not specifically
the ones on the list. Their vote challenge plan in Florida (using
a 109-year old pre-civil-rights-era state law) mirrors GOP plans in Ohio and is expected to cause massive voting
delays or shutdowns on voting day (and attendant discouragement/suppression of
voters). Governor Jeb Bush
encouraged the vote challenges and downplayed the significance of the
GOP plan. The GOP vote challengers/poll watchers are
disproportionately in minority rich districts - says something doesn't
it?
Additionally, the GOP challenged the votes already cast by
numerous people claiming that they are felons (using the repeatedly
discredited Florida "felon list") - and not unexpectedly,
shortly after they propagated this new list it was shown to have names
of people who had already had their voting rights restored.
The latest news is that the Florida Elections Director
issued a detailed ruling stating that challenges cannot be allowed to
delay the polls, that those challenged should be given the option of
casting a provisional ballot and that a voter's being in the
discredited felon list is not sufficient reason to allow a challenge
to his or her vote.
Via Dailykos,
we have this report by Greg
Palast in the BBC:
A secret document
obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a
plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the
state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight
investigation reveals.
Two e-mails, prepared
for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the
campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a
15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names
and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally
Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections
supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight:
"The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is
to challenge voters on election day."
Ion Sancho, a
Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives
inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.
Mass challenges
They may then only
vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting
to their legal voting status.
Mass challenges have
never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge
has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor
of elections."
"Quite frankly,
this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause
chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."
Sancho calls it
"intimidation." And it may be illegal.
In Washington,
well-known civil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal
law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a
basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the
voters.
The list of
Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black
residents.
When asked by
Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons
claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising
solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to
verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature.
Republican state
campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher stated the list was not
put together "in order to create" a challenge list, but
refused to say it would not be used in that manner.
Rather, she did
acknowledge that the party's poll workers will be instructed to
challenge voters, "Where it's stated in the law."
There was no
explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top
officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.
Private detective
In Jacksonville, to
determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of
intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every
"early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from
behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.
The private detective
claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
On the scene,
Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance
operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the
Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters,
almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
As Kos
notes:
I hadn't realized
that the caging memos Palast got his hands on came from the Dead
Letter Office over at the parody site GeorgeWBush.org
[eRiposte note:
The emails/lists are here
and here].
It seemed like most of those emails were kind of boring, but Palast
found the diamond in the rough. You can go check out the names
yourself. 49 of those people live at the Naval
Air Station in Jacksonville. So apparently, the GOP is
targetting some of our servicemembers as well.
UPDATE 10/28/04:
Blogwood
notes that the GOP seems to have recognized the illegality of
the "caging list" and is claiming that they won't selectively
use that for challenges.
We’ve recently
heard of GOP
plans to pay “volunteers” $100 each to intimidate voters in Ohio,
and now we have confirmation that similar tactics will be employed
in Florida.
...
They plan to put
“Poll Watchers” in certain precincts (I have no doubt that,
coincidentally, most precincts staffed with GOP watchers will be in
poor and minority neighborhoods.) to challenge certain voters. Now,
the way the system works in Florida, just one or two challenges,
even if they are without merit, can shut down the entire precinct,
as each poorly trained poll worker must weigh in with an opinion as
the whether or not the challenged voter should be allowed to cast a
ballot.
Working people will
not have time to wait in line forever. They will get discouraged, or
just have to get back to work, and they will leave the line. Every
lost vote is a small victory for the GOP.
Election
Protection Volunteer provides on way that you may be able to
help.
TBO.com.
The Republican
Party said Tuesday that it may equip its Florida poll watchers
with lists of voters whose registrations appear fraudulent, then
use a little- known section of state law to try blocking them from
voting as they arrive at the polls.
Democrats quickly
denounced the unprecedented tactic but did not rule out the
possibility that they, too, may file eligibility challenges next
week.
With both sides
amassing armies of lawyers, the prospect of the fight working its
way into neighborhood polling stations is frightening county
elections supervisors because the arcane procedure is so unwieldy
it could shut down entire stations each time it is exercised.
......
(Florida Republican
Party adviser Mindy) Tucker Fletcher would not identify which
voters the Republicans believe have fraudulently registered to
vote, but in comments this week she specifically complained of
felons and voters with false addresses on the voting rolls.
The Republicans
have compiled a list of voters that likely provided faulty
addresses.
Tucker Fletcher
said the party conducted widespread mailings to newly registered
voters of all parties and created a database of the name and
address on mailings that were returned by the post office. She
would not say whether that list would be used in any potential
challenges at the polls of voting rights.
The British
Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday that it had obtained a portion
of that database, which lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters
in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of
Jacksonville.
Tucker Fletcher
said the partial list obtained by the BBC ``is not going to be
used in any way to challenge voters.''
Uh, would that denial
have anything to do with the fact that the Jacksonville list may
well be illegal, since it looks to have been compiled using race
as a factor?
(back to the TBO.com
article)
Under the state's
challenging provision, observers must file an affidavit detailing
their cause for suspicion. The voter then is notified and asked to
fill out an affidavit of his own.
Browning said, ``At
this point, that voter is going to be incredibly, incredibly
ticked off.''
Voting in the
entire polling place is then suspended as all poll workers present
are required to convene to take a vote on whether the voter should
be allowed to cast a ballot. Majority rules.
If a majority of
poll workers - who have received no more than 20 minutes of
training on the procedure - decide the voter should not vote, a
provisional ballot is provided to the voter that will be sealed in
a secrecy envelope and considered by the county's canvassing board
in the days after the election.
Leon County
Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said he had never encountered a
challenge in 16 years. Browning said he had encountered a
challenge only once in his 24- year career.
Matt Miller, a
spokesman for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, said, ``All
the Republicans are able to talk about are, No. 1, scare voters
from the polls and, No. 2, raise questions about the election.''
AAbshier
at Dailykos has more (bold text is my emphasis):
From today's Tampa
Tribune:
The Republican Party
said Tuesday that it may equip its Florida poll watchers with
lists of voters whose registrations appear fraudulent, then
use a little-known section of state law to try blocking them from
voting as they arrive at the polls.
With both sides
amassing armies of lawyers, the prospect of the fight working its
way into neighborhood polling stations is frightening county
elections supervisors because the arcane procedure is so unwieldy
that it could SHUT DOWN ENTIRE STATIONS EACH TIME IT IS EXERCISED
(emphasis mine).
...The
sidebar (on the print edition, not the online edition), breaks down
the procedure, with my comments in italics:
1. The observer cites
reasons for the challenge in an affadavit.
2. The would-be
voter is notifed of the challenge and asked to file a written
response.
3. Precinct workers
(that is, all those INSIDE the polling station on Election Day)
vote on whether the challenge should be upheld or denied. The
article later states that at this time ALL voting in the entire
polling place is suspended during this part of the procedure,
while the precinct workers convene to consider a challenge!
4. If
the poll workers uphold the challenge, the voter is allowed to
fill out a provisional ballot to be considered later by the county
canvassing board.
The governing statute,
Title IX, Chapter 101.111, can be found here.
This is meant to be used in isolated, individual cases only.
Two election supervisors interviewed for the story, both
Republicans, stated they had essentially never encountered
challenges brought under provisions of this statute.
The Republicans are
doing this because there are no provisions for filing challenges
before Election Day. The prospect of having entire precincts
shut down to address challenges under this statute is very bad.
The
St. Petersburg Times reports (via Buzzflash):
Gov. Jeb Bush said
Wednesday he would have no problem if Republican poll watchers
challenge the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots on
Election Day, despite growing concern that it could create gridlock
and scare away qualified voters.
"I don't think
it will cause problems," Bush said. "I do think that
people who are not eligible to vote shouldn't and the people who are
should."
UPDATE 10/30/04
Norwood
at Dailykos adds this new, unsuprising twist:
Now,
state GOP officials are making a big stink over what they say are
ineligible ex-felons who have already voted or who have registered and
plan to vote. They are threatening to bring in the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement to investigate what they claim is an
emerging case of fraud.
...
Here's
the SP Times.
The Florida
Republican Party said Thursday that more than 900 felons already
have voted illegally or requested absentee ballots, triggering
another controversy over the party's aggressive efforts to
identify Floridians who might be unqualified to vote.
Using two
controversial and flawed state databases, Republicans also said
they identified an additional 13,568 felons expected to vote by
Election Day, based on their participation in the 2000 or 2002
elections or their recent registration as a new voter.
The list of 921
felons who have already voted includes 65 names from Hillsborough
County; 36 from Pinellas County; 11 from Hernando; three from
Citrus; and one from Pasco. The party plans to give all its
information to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for
investigation.
"We believe
this is simply the tip of the iceberg and there could be
potentially additional felons who have registered," said
Mindy Tucker Fletcher, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party.
But within hours of
the Republicans' announcement came indications that the GOP list
may suffer some of the same problems that caused Secretary of
State Glenda Hood to scrap her controversial list of 47,763
suspected felon voters in July.
Reporters for the
St. Petersburg Times quickly found two Tampa Bay area individuals
on the GOP list who say they have had their voting rights
restored.
Records show Neal
D. Bolinger, 57, of St. Petersburg had his rights restored in
1974, two years after his conviction for grand larceny, and has
been voting ever since.
He used an absentee
ballot last week to vote straight Republican.
It's the second
time in four years his name has been flagged. He had to convince
Pinellas County election officials in 2000 that he was qualified.
"If every four
years I come up on the list and have to have myself reinstated,
that will become a problem, and I'll have to start shaking some
trees," he said.
Tampa resident
Jeffrey Arnold, 44, said he received his clemency more than a
dozen years ago and has been voting ever since. The exact status
of Arnold and others could not be confirmed Thursday by the Times.
Fletcher
acknowledges the GOP's list started with flawed data.
Besides the state's
controversial felon voting list, it relied on a Florida Parole
Commission clemency list, updated through Oct.14, that has proven
inaccurate in the past because it does not include many felons
whose rights were restored under Gov. Reubin Askew in the 1970s.
"We felt it
was important to see if supervisors (of elections) had done their
jobs and cleaned their list when some admitted they hadn't,"
Fletcher said. "We wanted to see if the law was being broken
across the state systematically."
But some
supervisors countered that the list came from the same database
Hood had ordered them not to use.
"Why would
they use a list that is determined to have errors?" asked
Pinellas supervisor Deborah Clark. "If their real objective
is to keep ineligible voters from casting ballots, why didn't they
give the list to supervisor of elections right away? No one from
the Republican Party has contacted me."
Hillsborough
Supervisor Buddy Johnson sounded a similar theme.
"I don't have
the same information," he said. "I'm not removing anyone
off any voter list until I have ascertained that they are in fact
a felon."
Blogwood has an
update from the St.
Petersburg Times:
Hoping to ease rising
concern over voter challenges, state elections officials on Friday
released new guidelines for handling such challenges without
delaying other voters.
The four-page memo
from state Elections Director Dawn Roberts was an attempt to clarify
a 109-year-old election law that in recent days has generated
widespread anxiety about whether it would be used to deter voters.
The memo emphasizes
that voter challenges must be resolved without delaying other
voters.
It says that even if
a challenge is successful, the voter must be given the option to
file a provisional ballot. And it reaffirms that inclusion on a
controversial state felon list is not sufficient evidence to sustain
a challenge.
The new guidelines
are the state's first formal response to concerns that the arcane
poll watcher law has the potential to cause problems on Election
Day. As recently as Wednesday, Gov. Jeb Bush said he didn't expect
poll watcher challenges to be a problem.
"Everybody is
more focused on this now days before the election," said Deputy
Secretary of State Alia Faraj. "We wanted to make sure that
supervisors are clear on the procedures outlined in state law. . . .
It requires more than just (a poll watcher) pointing at someone in
the precinct. There's a process in place."
Faraj said the memo,
sent to county elections officials on Thursday, was written after
repeated conversations with local election officials, who reported
multiple inquiries from attorneys.
Republican Party
officials have said they are considering having their poll watchers
challenge felons or other voters they consider ineligible.
On Thursday, the GOP
unveiled part of its research: a list of 921 felons that it thinks
have already voted early or requested an absentee ballot in
violation of state law. The list was culled from flawed state
databases.
...
Mindy Tucker Fletcher, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party,
called the memo "reasonable and balanced. If there is one thing
we learned from 2000, it's that it's important to have the rules
laid out beforehand."
Supervisors of
elections appeared to welcome the advice as they braced for record
numbers of poll watchers. By the end of the day Friday, more than a
dozen counties had talked with state elections officials to say they
planned to follow Roberts' guidelines.
UPDATE 10/31/04 Robin
at Dailykos has this
update:
I guess it's naive of me to keep being shocked by this kind of
thing, but I really hope I will never read news like this and just
shrug it off as par for the course:
From this morning's
St.
Petersburg Times:
In Miami-Dade County, Democrats said, 59 percent of predominantly
black precincts have at least one Republican poll watcher, while
24 percent of predominantly white precincts have them. In Leon
County, 64 percent of black precincts have at least one Republican
poll watcher, compared with 24 percent of majority white
precincts. In Alachua, 71 percent of black precincts have a
Republican poll watcher assigned, while 24 percent of white
precincts do.
10/22/04
[Permalink] UPDATED
11/1/04
Low income, minority and
elderly Florida voters (a Democratic leaning group) fraudulently asked
to give away absentee ballots to strangers pretending to be election
officials; others illegally asked to vote "at home" or
provide information on parking tickets, debt or arrest records. Via Atrios,
we have this report in the St.
Petersburg Times (bold text is my emphasis):
Pasco elections
officials have a warning for the county's absentee voters: Don't
give your ballot to a stranger claiming to be from the elections
office.
They're not who they
say they are.
"The people who
are soliciting your ballots in this manner are not elections
officials," Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning warned
Thursday.
The warning came
after a phone call from a west Pasco woman. Other Florida counties
have gotten similar complaints.
"We've had a
bunch of them - 100 at least," said Bob Sweat, elections
supervisor for Manatee County. "It's probably going on all over
the state of Florida."
The Pasco woman said
someone came to her home to collect her absentee ballot earlier this
week. She said she was led to believe they were from the elections
office. The woman told the strangers she hadn't completed the
ballot, but they took it anyway.
...
Browning's office
had not yet received the woman's absentee ballot Thursday. Given the
circumstances, Browning arranged to send her another.
Other counties have
had numerous complaints about similar misrepresentations.
"We've had a few
people with those complaints - I'd say less than 10," said Dan
Nolan, chief of staff for Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy
Johnson. Johnson said he routinely advises voters to send their
absentee ballots in via mail, or to bring it directly to his office.
In Manatee, there
have been numerous complaints, and the Sheriff's Office is
investigating.
Manatee Elections
Supervisor Sweat said the people collecting the ballots appeared to
know exactly who had absentee ballots. It is possible for political
parties, candidates and political groups to get lists of voters who
request the absentee ballots.
Sweat said it
appeared the collections were occurring in neighborhoods full of
low-income, minority and elderly residents.
...
In his warning,
Browning said, "I need to make it very clear that my office
will never show up at your place of residence to collect your
absentee ballot."
Here's another
report in the St. Petersburg Times, via Election
Protection:
When Dolores Cuellar
of Orlando opened her door and saw a woman with a clipboard, she
didn't hesitate to say which candidate she preferred.
"Not Bush,"
said Cuellar, 42. "The other one."
The woman told
Cuellar she didn't need to bother going to the polls. She would mark
Cuellar's vote on a piece of paper right there. And while she was at
it, she also would record a vote for Cuellar's 18-year-old daughter.
Cuellar, who had
never voted before, said she mistakenly thought she had just voted.
"You never know
what can be true or what can't be true," said her daughter,
Julie Herrera, who later grew suspicious and called county elections
officials.
Across Florida,
elections officials say voters are being approached by individuals
misrepresenting themselves and offering misleading or inaccurate
information about voting.
Voters cannot vote at
home and do not have to answer personal questions before casting a
ballot, election officials say. Election officials won't show up
unannounced at private homes, either.
Hillsborough
Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said he has heard about a
group asking voters at the County Center if they have ever been
arrested, have outstanding parking tickets or any debt.
People holding
clipboards stood outside the County Center last week, offering to
direct voters to the 16th-floor election office. They said they were
from a voter registration office.< | 
