Your explanation, if true, adds further confusion. I live and voted in Palm Beach County (District 22, West’s previous district). There were 3 pages to the ballot. They try to ‘improve’ things because this is the home of the infamous butterfly ballot and hanging chads from the 2000 catastrophe. My understanding was that each of the 3 pages had the same serial number, and the volunteers running the show were very careful to verify each voters’ district and precinct based on address. This was the process for early voting, as citizens of PB County were allowed to early vote at any designated early voting location in the county. In other words you did not have to go to your specified precinct to vote because the early voting books contain all roughly million registerd voters in Palm Beach County.
If you early voted you had to sign a document with penalty of law that essentially states you will not vote more than once. On Election Day, obviously only those who hadn’t already voted are authorized to vote, and you are required to vote only at your designate precinct. Unlike early voting, your precinct has books with those people who are registered, alphabetically in their precincts. They check your ID and then you sign the book next to your name. Since Early voting finishes just a few days before Election Day, there is NO update to the precinct books to indicate who already voted early. You are ON YOUR HONOR at that point.
Fraud is very easy because it is assumed nobody is going to check the early voting books against the precinct votes and verify the signed documents. Allen West has a very good reason to check this out. There are millions of people in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. Early voting is loose at best and it’s easy to steal such a close result with the system as it is.
Yes, Orange County runs about the same way, we had 3 page ballots as well. It’s not that I don’t think there was fraud; I certainly do. I just think that the raw data posted for St. Lucie is explained by way of the number of pages scanned.
Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me that I’m trying to find data on. We keep hearing that this year the turnout was lower than 2008, but I don’t recall 2008 turnout being 65% - 70% like we are apparently seeing in all Florida counties. Is Florida turnout that much different than the rest of the country? Am I not recalling the turnout numbers from 2008 correctly?