Posted on 10/28/2004 7:02:18 AM PDT by JesseHousman
SECOND CHANCE: Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said her office is resending about 76,000 absentee ballots to voters who say they asked for but still haven't received them.
Broward County's election office is resending about 76,000 absentee ballots to voters who say they asked for but still haven't received them, an ominous sign of voting problems just days before the nation again sets its eyes on Florida.
The elections office is still trying to discover why so many people haven't received the absentee ballots. But with so little time before Tuesday's election, officials will mail out replacements -- thousands of them -- today. The ballots will be shipped via overnight mail to people outside the county, said Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.
Broward's mix-up is the most profound, but not the only, glitch in the absentee voter process across Florida. From teenagers away at school to homeowners away on travel, complaints are mounting that absentee ballots have somehow been lost between here and there. Voters in Palm Beach County have reported similar problems.
In Broward, the ballots will go to every voter who requested one but who has not yet returned the original ballot, Snipes said. More than 50,800 of the 127,320 people who asked for absentee ballots have returned them. The rest will get new ballots.
''We're going to give voters the benefit of the doubt,'' Snipes said. ``This isn't a blame game. What we're concentrating on is getting the ballots to the voter.''
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement -- at Snipes' request -- launched an investigation Tuesday, but found no evidence of criminal intent, said Paige Patterson-Hughes, spokeswoman for the agency's South Florida region.
NO ANSWER
But the office still hasn't solved why people have yet to receive ballots they requested weeks, or months, ago.
''What went wrong?'' asked Reggie Mitchell, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition. ``Obviously, we want to do everything we can to make sure the voters who are supposed to actually get to vote.''
For months, both political parties and critics of the touch-screen machines used in Broward, Miami-Dade and 13 other counties have urged voters to use absentee ballots, which are on paper. That led to a surge of requests, topping more than 300,000 in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
The absentee process in Broward begins when requests are processed at the voting equipment center in Fort Lauderdale. Then a courier, who is a full-time elections employee, drives the ballots to the Oakland Park Boulevard post office.
Postal investigators are concentrating their inquiry on 58,000 ballots that the elections office said were dropped off on Oct. 7 and 8, said Del Alvarez, an inspector for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The ballots are isolated from other mail and sorted on a designated machine. Ballots that are for local delivery are normally delivered in one day.
Postal inspectors haven't found a stockpile of absentee ballots, Alvarez said.
''There's no absentee ballots in any post office,'' Alvarez said. ``We tried to look for them. There's no delayed mail, everything has been delivered. We don't know what the problem is.''
The issue has reached a level of urgency among local and national Democratic and Republican leaders, who rely heavily on absentee ballots from their party faithful.
''Our legal team has been looking at it to make sure no one is being denied their right to vote,'' said Kevin Tynan, chairman of the Broward Republican Party.
SUSCEPTIBLE TO FRAUD
Now, Tynan said, some party officials are concerned that sending duplicate ballots opens the door to fraud. When voters return a ballot to the elections office, workers enter the voter's name in a computer and they're not allowed to vote at the polls on Election Day. Also, if 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.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida fears that some voters may have problems if they requested an absentee ballot and show up on Election Day.
''Given how late a lot of these were mailed out, it's going to be a challenge for a lot of folks to get them back in by the deadline,'' said Courtenay Strickland, voting rights project director for the ACLU of Florida.
HAND DELIVERY
Some voters aren't taking any chances. Many have decided to vote early. Others are dropping off their ballots in person at the elections office.
''That way I know it's here,'' said Phyon Hollinger, a boat detailer who spent his lunch break hand-delivering his vote to the Fort Lauderdale elections office. ``It was important last time, and it's more important this time. You've got to take it into your own hands.''
Selma Zwicker, 75, of Pembroke Pines, said she hasn't received a ballot despite calling the elections office at least 12 times. One time, when she did get through, she was told that records showed her ballot was mailed on Oct. 7.
Wednesday, Zwicker said an elections worker told her she could come into the office to get an absentee ballot because it probably couldn't be mailed in time. ''I really don't have anybody to take me there,'' Zwicker said.
So far, Miami-Dade County has not experienced the same level of complaints about missing absentee ballots, said spokesman Seth Kaplan. But that doesn't mean there haven't been problems.
Beau Paulk, 30, of Miami Shores, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said he asked for his ballot in August. A week ago, he finally called the Miami-Dade elections office, only to be told that they were surprised he hadn't gotten one. Paulk said the ballot arrived late Wednesday.
Herald staff writers Alfonso Chardy and Curtis Morgan contributed to this report.
What opportunities for serious mischief they hand the "voter." The concentration is on getting as many ballots to unregistered voters as possible so they can spread the franchise to undeserving others.
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.
Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach County... Democrat strongholds in Florida. The potential for multiple absentee ballots in just these areas? Sure sounds like a coincidence to me! /sarc
Okay I think I have the crime here!
(After 10 minutes of investigating)
"Volunteers began helping Snipes' office package the ballots Wednesday evening. All should be mailed out by Friday morning at the latest but must be returned by the end of business Tuesday."
Democrats steal the ballots that are to be sent out. They fill them out for Kerry and mail them in. Read the paragraph above. Mailed out by Friday and returned by Tuesday???? Mail time is how many days? Mail Friday, they may or may not even get them by Tuesday. Then they have to mail them back???? I predict a lot of double voting and a lot of people not bothering to send them in, but hey, their ballot was filled out already by ??? so there is no suspicion there! Can the crime be this easy? Kerry will win before they can investigate!
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cvoting28oct28,0,5959567.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
Oh one more quote of importance here!
"Charles Lichtman, lead Florida attorney for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, met with Snipes and Lieberman on Wednesday afternoon and asked them to defer finding out what went wrong and concentrate on getting ballots to voters."
Rats ate 'em!
And the election officials in Broward will spare no effort to find the true culprit.
Well we could try this in WI except most likely when you informed the commies of turning over the pics to the AG....they could point to the fat woman carrying the biggest sign and say "Make it easy on yourself....here she is..."
imo
Civil war. Round up all the nitwits and aliens and confine them to one of our lesser islands. Manhattan comes to mind. Remove the bridges, fill the river with alligators.
But not to people outside the country. Even FedEx can't overnight to Baghdad. Miiltary voters disenfranchised .......and are the Democrats upset? Is John Kerry mad? .....Nope. It's exactly what they wanted.
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