Posted on 09/11/2002 10:58:31 AM PDT by ijcr
Sunrise, Florida - To Miriam Oliphant, the keys to life and elections are the same: preparation and organization.
These days the Broward County election supervisor is all about details - 60 classes a week for county poll workers, an inventory of iVotronic voting machines stacked in a warehouse, even blue aprons for precinct clerks that will hold the all-important computer-card keys needed to operate the machines.
"I am going to do everything I possibly can to correct a system that has been broken," Oliphant said. "We know change is long overdue in Broward County."
Across the nation, election officials are entering crunch time in their first major test since the confusion of Election Day 2000. They are pumping up voter education, improving training for poll workers, and placing a premium on details that might have been overlooked in the past.
Twenty-four states hold primaries in August and September. Among them, Florida and 10 others conduct their primaries Sept. 10.
Florida, infamous for hanging chads on punch-card ballots, was the focal point of the protracted 2000 presidential battle that ended with George W. Bush beating Al Gore by just 537 votes in the state.
Florida lawmakers approved a series of reforms last year, including outlawing punch-card ballots and authorizing $32 million for new equipment and voter education.
Among Florida counties, Broward's efforts at improvements are drawing attention because the county has nearly one million registered voters, the most in the state, and features a diverse population of elderly, suburban dwellers and Spanish- and Creole-speaking voters.
Since taking over 18 months ago, Oliphant has initiated a flurry of innovations.
To introduce voters to the new ATM-style, touch-screen voting machines, Oliphant has held demonstrations at supermarkets and community centers. She is borrowing 144 phone lines from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale to handle calls from confused workers and voters on Election Day.
And to recruit 6,000 poll workers, Oliphant has tapped corporations and county employees with backgrounds in customer service and technology. Public employees who volunteer as poll workers will receive a paid day off plus $100 for working the 14-hour day.
"We truly cannot think of a more responsible, patriotic thing to do than to be involved in the election process on the eve of 9/11," said Bob Cantrell, who runs the county's poll worker operation.
At a four-hour training class for poll workers in Sunrise, Leroy Mattear and nine others got hands-on training on the new machines and voting procedures.
Two years ago, his training session held about 500 poll workers, many of whom chatted casually or left the hall at their leisure, Mattear said.
"Now it's like school," he said.
Elsewhere in Florida, Hillsborough County elections chief Pam Iorio has held nearly 400 road shows to display the new technology, but she says many supervisors are still worried.
"There's a concern among supervisors that any little bump along the way will be exaggerated because it's Florida," Iorio said. ........................................................
Oliphant: I need more help
By MICHAEL A.W. OTTEY
Miami Herald
Miriam Oliphant arrived at Broward voting headquarters early Wednesday morning vowing to finish counting Broward votes and to gather more and better resources to avoid in November the kind of confusion that infuriated voters -- and would-be voters -- on Tuesday.
``It's human error, it's mechanical errors, but we don't excuses, we want results, said Oliphant, Broward Supervisor of Elections.
As late as 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, her office was still revising the number of precincts from which votes could not be found. Earlier, officials had said six could not be found; On Wednesday, Broward County Commissioner Lori Parrish said she had been told that 15 precincts were still missing.
Surrounded by the media, Oliphant spoke for about 10 minutes early Wednesday. She admitted that the primary election did not run smoothly on Tuesday and proposed a citizen oversight board that would look at what went wrong and how to improve performance next time.
She offered no details about how such a board would be comprised or what power it would have, though she suggested that she needs the administrative and management expertise of business leaders. Oliphant said the job of managing a major election in Broward County -- which has more registered voters than any other in Florida -- is bigger than the resources she has available.
Others have suggested the same thing in recent weeks, as her election preparations faltered. As recently as a few days before the election, questions were raised about the number and location of polling places, the number and diversity of poll workers, and how well they were trained.
In response to the suggestion that some were calling for her resignation, she said, ''I'm doing my job.'' She said she had not been contacted by the Secretary of State or anyone else about resigning.
''The citizens have confidence in me,'' she said. ''We have to make sure that we have competent personnel'' working the polls. ``We have a lot to do in a short period of time.''
Meanwhile, vote-counting is expected to begin again at 1 p.m. today in Broward.
Republican Observer Jay Hurley spent most of the night at election headquarters and was appalled by what he saw. ``This was disorganized and chaotic. At some point, the confusion turned from minor confusion to mass confusion. . . I don't even think the people here realized what the problems were. I don't know if it can be fixed because they don't know what the problems are.''
Thus, the Death to the Free Election system.
People are waking up to the corruption, and it will become increasingly difficult to keep corrupt people in office, as communications aren't solely in the hands of the mainstream media.
It is unforgiveable that, yesterday, two of the same Florida counties had primary election irregularities that had irregularities in the 2000 general election... and both have Democratic Election Supervisors: Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The irony of all this, is that the 2000 election fiasco was laid at Jeb Bush's doorstep. Now it looks like the real answer will become obvious to the overall public. Incompetent election managers and voters, all at the local level.
The chaos described in this post reminds me of the early days of the Clinton presidency, as described by Gary Aldrich. A bunch of amateurs thinking they can turn the world on its end just because they're in charge. They apparently never realize that they have to perform.
...and that's as far as most of them read. They didn't realize they'd actually have to get dressed and show up at polling places to get their money. Or maybe they did and assumed nobody would miss them if they didn't show up. Public freeloaders.
The card is punched --- the chad holes are created in accordance with the voter's selections.The card has imprinted, a bar-code also indicating the selections taken by the voter.
The card is then fed by the voter into a Vote Confirmation Machine ("VCM"), in the same voting booth.
The VCM reads the punched-out holes and the bar-code.
If the VCM does not find a match, the VCM rejects the card back to the voter who must take the card to the voting polls workers and register an exchange for a fresh card, in order to make a correct trip through the voting both.
If the VCM finds a match, the VCM laminates the card, both faces, sealing in the voter's selections.
I fail to see where volunteer fits into this description. Sounds like the public employee gets $25/hour for working the extra four hours above regular pay for a typical 8 hour day.
There are no current punch-card voting machines. They were outlawed.
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