Posted on 10/26/2004 6:35:38 AM PDT by Jacvin
Tempers flare at Election Day nears By Jane Musgrave
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
With a week to go before next Tuesday's presidential election, Republicans and Democrats on Monday found at least one thing on which to agree: Things are getting increasingly ugly.
From smashed car windows, to picked locks at campaign headquarters, to ugly rhetoric, to illegal campaign activity, both sides, in charges and countercharges, said emotions surrounding the Nov. 2 election are getting hot. Some said, too hot.
"There's serious violence by the other side," Republican activist Jack Furnari said of several incidents during the past few days that have been aimed at supporters of President Bush.
Democrats countered that the tone of Republican rhetoric is getting increasingly hostile.
"The majority of Bush supporters are very, very rude," said Doris Karp, 80, of suburban Delray Beach, who was handing out literature supporting Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Kerry outside Palm Beach County government offices in Delray Beach.
While those on both sides insisted they are taking the high ground, in the past several days:
• Car windows of two Bush supporters were smashed Friday while the owners were standing along Palmetto Park Road waving Bush-Cheney signs, Furnari said. He said dirt and rocks were thrown at his face from a nearby car.
• A man carrying a sign, "Arafat Endorses Kerry," was asked to leave an early voting place at Southwest Regional Library west of Boca Raton during the weekend, said Kerry supporter Anna Schulz, 43, of Boca Raton. While security officials said his sign was protected by the First Amendment, his antagonistic behavior toward Kerry supporters was not, she said.
• Workers arrived at the Bush-Cheney election headquarters on Federal Highway in Boca Raton on Monday morning to find the door lock jammed with a pin. "I don't want to point fingers," said volunteer coordinator John Farner. "But obviously somebody didn't want us to get into the office."
• The president of the College Republicans at Florida Atlantic University was surrounded by spitting, beer-tossing, insult-yelling Kerry supporters when she drove through the campus shortly before Kerry's appearance there Sunday. Dana Roberts, 20, said Monday she has a video of the scene that she plans to share with campus police.
• A simmering feud between Democratic and Republican election watchers erupted into a screaming match Monday at the early voting location at the Jupiter Recreation Center, said Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore. She had the two separated but warned that future problems could force her to close the voting site.
Furnari blamed some of the incidents on outside agitators.
Carol Ann Loehndorf, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Palm Beach County, decried the reported violence.
"That's wrong, wrong, wrong," she said. "I can't tell you how much I abhor violence."
However, she added, "Feelings are running pretty high right now. And, I hate to say it, but what's happening at the supervisor of elections office isn't helping."
She said her office received roughly 150 calls from people upset that they had yet to receive absentee ballots they requested weeks, sometimes months, ago. Further, the lines at some of the early voting locations, particularly those in the southern part of the county, are fueling suspicions born in the 2000 election debacle that there is some conspiracy to keep them from voting.
"Democratic voters are very suspicious, very leery," she said.
In a news release, LePore sought to alleviate such concerns.
She said her office has sent out 113,317 absentee ballots as of Saturday. That is nearly twice the 62,842 that were sent for the 2002 gubernatorial election, the first year people could order them without having a specific reason for doing so.
LePore blamed some delays on groups that collected absentee ballot request forms from voters, but didn't turn them in quickly. Those who have requested one and not received it should call LePore's office at 656-6200.
But it may be difficult to get through. The office is receiving 13,000 calls a day, LePore said in the news release in which she asked people's "patience and understanding."
She also said roughly 2,500 people a day have voted at the eight early voting locations around the county since the early polls opened last Monday. Long lines continued to greet voters at all three locations in the southern part of the county. The locations include the governmental center on Congress Avenue in Delray Beach, and the county branch libraries on West Atlantic Avenue west of Delray and on Glades Road west of Boca Raton. Waits of two to three hours continued throughout the day.
She estimated 40,000 people will vote early before the Nov. 2 election.
While some said more voting machines are needed to get the lines moving, others said, in some cases, voters are unprepared.
For instance, one woman waited more than two hours to vote only to be turned away, said a library employee.
"She was from Broward County," he explained.
While any county resident can vote at any of the eight early voting locations, people must vote in their home counties
CNN has the video and a local station ran it last night.
Do you notice the Dem response was that some absentee ballots were late arriving?
As if that's an excuse and it was only Democrat absentee ballots that were late. Republicans use the same Post Office and their ballots were late also.
Where can we find the video?
Do you have a link to the video?
thanks for the post. this is a shotty piece of reporting by merely repeating what other's have said. i do not doubt that things are getting ugly, but the story underneath the events have not been inestigated. who is ogranizing this stff? also, i think hat political campaiging must stop within a certain distance from the polls, so asking the arafat sign to be taken down might ge a simple act of enforcing the law.
this is simply more hype to rile up the florida voters.
People waiting in line to vote is a conspiracy? Oh my God!
Carol Ann Loehndorf, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Palm Beach County, decried the reported violence.
"That's wrong, wrong, wrong," she said. "I can't tell you how much I abhor violence."
Balony!
The Democrats who are doing this hav gotten the word from someone in a high place that nothing is going to happen to them.
A guy over in Clearwater , florida caught someone on video tape coming onto his property and stealing his Bush-Cheney sign. On the audio you could hear this individual tearing up the sign and placing it in his trash can.
The police were called, they came, they watched the video.
The action they took? They told the guy that they would write a report and forward it to the State Attorney's Office. In other words, none.
The Democrats and their goon squads have gotten the word that it is open season on Republicans. Go crack shulls and have fun.
Suggestion: Everyone should take one of those cheap throwaway cameras with them to the polls and actually take or pretend to take pictures of the commies standing around with demonrat signs. Then inform them you're turning their picture over to your State Attorney General. Should be great fun! Get em all lathered up.
If she had been a Democrat, ther would be more FBI agents on the Campus this morning that students.
May these people get what they are so dearly asking for.
Typical MSM b.s. -- equate actual violence by the 'rats with words from the 'pubbies that hurt 'rat feelings.
I'm not a violent person - honest. ;0)
Why doesn't someone do a poll.
"Will you allow Democratic thugs to deter you from voting on November 2nd?"
Liberals abhor violence ONLY if it is direcred against them. Otherwise, they are a bunch of Stalinoids.
CNN has the video and a local station ran it last night.
Did CNN show the video?
If you have another copy of the video, send it to Fox News.
Exactly. But is that not always the case? Who are the vandals and thugs out in the streets? Always the democrats. In fact, the only time Repbulicans took to the streets was after the 2000 election and they refused to let the left steal the election.
Horrible! What event were those pictures from?
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