Prosecutors find 100 uncounted ballots in Oliphant's office

sun-sentinel ^ | January 23 2003 | Scott Wyman

[Grig]

State prosecutors have found ...about 100 ballots in a mail tray inside a file cabinet at Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant's Fort Lauderdale office during a search late Tuesday afternoon. County officials were stunned by the discovery and said it would likely be a key piece of evidence in the ongoing investigation of Oliphant.

[Happy2BMe]

"Isn't it amazing how they were able to write the whole thing without using the word 'democrat'?"

What is it about Florida?

DemoCraPsThe Masters of Class Warfare

[harrym]

It's even worse in San Francisco. Haygood (a black, demo, lesbian -- duh, it is San Francisco ya know) was brought up on charges of incompetency for running the election budget over by several million dollars. That was almost a year ago. She no longer runs the Dept. of Elections here but has been collecting her full salary (6 figures) ever since. This was reported in the local press to begin with but haven't seen anything in the last several months. She is still drawing her salary though.

[SGCOS]

...Prosecutors find 100 uncounted ballots in Oliphant's office

If the ballots weren't counted, how do they know there's 100?

yuk yuk yuk

[gitmo]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020921-23311144.htm

At a Sept. 4 press conference, she said: "I say to all the voters of Broward County that on September 10, we will have a successful election."
.
Afterward, she blamed Mr. Bush, the state Legislature and the company that sold the new voting system to the county for the problems. But faced with the loss of her job, Miss Oliphant agreed to an arrangement from county commissioners.
...
.
In Broward, though, there were hints of a troubled primary election as far back as early summer.
.
"We were the first group to say that this election was going to have problems, back in June," said George LeMieux, chairman of the Broward County Republican Party. When his party sent a list of 750 aspiring poll workers, none of them was selected, in favor of an all-Democratic staff..
.
"We had to meet with her and show her the state provision that requires poll workers from each party be present at each precinct," Mr. LeMieux said.

She did not cooperate with their demands. "We're not doing it the way they used to do it," Miss Oliphant told a Broward County newspaper. "We can't have those disadvantaged communities complaining." She was eventually forced to bring in Republican poll workers..

The Broward County Republicans earlier this year accused Miss Oliphant's office of using a poll worker training video that made Republicans look racist..

The video shows a white male voter attempting to verbally intimidate a black female poll worker..

"We obtained a copy of the video and called her and told her she needed to change it," Mr. LeMieux said. "She refused at first. We went public with it. Then she changed it, and that scene was removed."

[dep]

Preliminary analysis by DNC experts shows that all 100 were intended votes for Al Gore.

as proof, the experts pointed to the fact that they all had the name "pat buchanan" written in.

dep

[Rome2000]

If this marxist crook and her race baiting rat minions pulled this in an inconsequential primary, can you imagine how many absentee votes they tossed in the 2002 Presidential election?

She also singlehandedly torpedoed Janet Reno.

[Rome2000]

Unopened Broward absentee ballots are seized
Found in Broward elections office
BY ERIKA BOLSTAD AND BETH REINHARD
ebolstad@herald.com

State investigators seized a tray of unopened absentee ballots from a Broward elections office filing cabinet -- ballots a source said appeared to be postmarked and properly signed for the Sept. 10 election.

A source in the elections office told The Herald that a Broward State Attorney's Office investigator walked in Tuesday afternoon wielding a subpoena. At the time, elections chief Miriam Oliphant was upstairs with county commissioners, defending an audit of her office.

The investigator appeared to know the ballots were stored in a wide cabinet in the main work area of the office. An employee fetched the tray of ballots for the investigator, the source said.

The unopened ballots in the mail tray appeared to be valid, with the required signatures on the back of the envelopes, the source said. Unlike other absentee ballots, these were not stamped with the date and time they arrived in the office.

Typically, absentee ballots are sorted as they arrive in the supervisor's office. It would be unusual for unopened ballots to go unsorted or to be stored in a mail tray in such a filing cabinet.

STATE REQUIREMENT

State law requires that all votes be certified by noon the Thursday after the primary election. Uncounted ballots could have affected the results of some close races, including the Democratic primary between gubernatorial candidates Bill McBride and Janet Reno.

The state attorney's criminal probe into the possible mishandling of votes cast in the Sept. 10 election was launched after a county audit, which was released Nov. 15 and pointed to financial mismanagement and ethical breaches in Oliphant's office.

Under state law, any elections employee who attempts to interfere with a ballot can be charged with a third-degree felony.

The Herald reported earlier this month that an elections employee told investigators that absentee ballots sat unopened in the mailroom at least two days after the September election. Other elections employees have also been interviewed about the ballots, indicating that they are a key part of the investigation.

At least four more employees testified this week: Mary Hall and Carol Hill, who supervised absentee ballots in the September election; staffer Bob Adams; and Evan Kolodny, who supervised the mailroom clerk who was chiefly responsible for picking up the ballots from the post office.

The clerk, Glen Davis, also has been interviewed by state investigators. Davis has been kept on as a mailroom clerk despite reprimands for coming to work late and drunk. He has a relationship with Oliphant's sister, Robin Darville.

Rumors about unopened and possibly discarded ballots have been circulating since the chaotic September primary. County Judge Jay Spechler, chairman of the vote canvassing board, was so concerned that he personally picked up absentee ballots at the post office on the afternoon of the Nov. 5 election.

Meanwhile, a team of fellow elections supervisors will descend on Oliphant's office today to help her outline what she needs to do to prepare for the Feb. 11 and March 11 municipal elections.

OTHER SUPERVISORS

The observers include neighboring supervisors David Leahy from Miami-Dade County and Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County supervisor who leads a state association of elections officials. Elections supervisors from four other Florida counties also will attend.

They hope to release a list of suggestions to the governor, the Division of Elections, Oliphant and the Broward County Commission by Friday.

And they have received clear instructions from Gov. Jeb Bush. If Oliphant doesn't cooperate with their suggestions, the governor has said he will reconsider his decision last week not to suspend her.

''He's hoping the direction we're taking will be helpful to the cities of Broward County,'' said Ronald Labasky, the general counsel for the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.

The officials, however, will not be chipping in to send out absentee ballots or program the touch-screen machines, LePore said.

They are merely helping Oliphant determine what she needs to accomplish for the municipal elections.

The supervisors' association is concerned that another bad election tarnishes the reputation of the entire state.

''I'm not necessarily doing it for the person, I'm doing it for the process,'' LePore said. ``It makes the rest of us look bad.''

[dep]

can you imagine how many absentee votes they tossed in the 2002 Presidential election?

all of them. every single one. and what's more, they managed to carry their nefarious scheme to fruition in all 50 states -- and even brainwashed the media and secretly changed the constitution and put sibliminal messages on teevee so that we wouldn't notice, which is why most of us are content with having presidential elections once every four years, and delighted with the fellow elected in the one held in 2000.

dep

[Bubba_Leroy]

Isn't it amazing how they were able to write the whole thing without using the word 'democrat'?

I assumed that she was a democRAT based on the fact that the article fails to indicate her party affiliation. If she were a Republican, every reference to her in the article would be to "Republican Oliphant".

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

he he he wrong ones those oliphants are all dead .
I think they all caught Orcinitus!

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, I would hate to try to snatch the ballots away from them if they were alive!

[FrogMom]

I made it to about 50 posts on DU before being banned. A friend of mine got banned after 4 posts there...

I only made one post before being banned. Was a discussion about abortion...

[KSCITYBOY]

bump

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Yes. I was posting this info at the time of Ms. Oliphant's original mischief...losing hundreds of thousands of the Fla. taxpayer $$$$ and her incompetent supervision of the Broward Fla. primary elections. If Ms. Oliphant were any other race, a man, and/or a Republican - she would have been fired, and flogged in the international press, imho.

Check out these comments from Alcee Hastings in the SP Times last June:

Conventional wisdom has Janet Reno sweeping the black vote, but two of Florida's three black members of Congress, all Democrats, are not hopping on the Reno bandwagon.

"Janet Reno can't win," said U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings of Broward County, a Reno stronghold. "I told her that if she hadn't seen Waco burning enough, Bill Clinton kissing Monica enough, and Elian being snatched enough, then she should run for governor." He favors Bill McBride.

Link

The Sun Sentinel adds this after the election:

U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, said nothing Oliphant is accused of rises to the level of misdeeds he thinks were committed by former Secretary of State Katherine Harris in the 2000 election. He said Bush would face the wrath of black voters in the November election if he removes Oliphant.

"I dare the governor to remove her," Hastings said. "He'll create a firestorm that will eclipse the one he created in the One Florida plan. He'll need Katherine Harris to count the votes for him again."

________

Instead of firing Ms. Oliphant after the primary, Jeb, as you know O.K.ed Broward's solution...to assemble a "commission" to 'oversee' the election....Ms. Oliphant is happy, claiming she chose the members. Guess who's in charge? One of Alcee Hastings top aids.

Coincidence?

[katherineisgreat]

I think this means that there was an effort by rats to keep Reno from loosing. Broward is liberal, and it's a Reno place. And where aren't ballots counted... BROWARD! The media should really mention this.

[Crusher138]

Jeb Bush is playing this well.

If he had removed her from office, he would have been another racist Bush denying black people the vote.

The Dems set this up themselves, they will have to clean it up. If they leave her in office, they have budget overruns and screwed up elections. If they remove her from office, the face the wrath of the black community. They tried to shove this off on Bush so they could wash their hands of it, but he didn't take the bait.

Now the local Dems will have to build a case of criminal and/or negligent activities against Oliphant to justify their position against her in the eyes of the black community. It won't be hard and it will be fun to watch them feeding on one of their own.

P.S. Alcee has never seen a black democrat he didn't like. EVERYTHING is racial in his eyes.

[Revelation 911]

bump