[Mb-civic] NY Times report on Florida plus more from Palast on FL ballot dsyfunctions

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/politics/campaign/28florida.html?ex=125
6702400&en=2c67e5e3d370bdd1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

October 28, 2004
Passion and Election Disputes On Rise in Florida as Vote 
Nears
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
and ABBY GOODNOUGH
 
ENDALL, Fla., Oct. 27 - It is as if the presidential election of 2000 never 
ended here.

Six days before Election Day, Florida is again struggling with questions about 
potential voting irregularities, from complaints about missing absentee ballots 
in Broward County and accusations of voter suppression in minority 
neighborhoods to concerns about new touch-screen voting machines. 
Floridians have been standing for as long as three hours to cast early votes 
in the presidential race, testimony to the unresolved passions of the election 
of 2000. Interest is so intense that analysts predict that a staggering 75 
percent of Florida voters will cast ballots by the time polls close Tuesday 
evening.

The disappearance of absentee ballots only fed suspicion among Democrats 
already distrustful of a state government controlled by President Bush's 
brother Gov. Jeb Bush, with pollsters saying Floridians are already 
concerned that their votes will not be counted.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Wednesday that it found 
no foul play after investigating widespread complaints of missing absentee 
ballots in Broward County. But questions remained about where the ballots 
had gone and whether the intended recipients would be able to vote.

The atmosphere here is not as toxic as in 2000, and neither party expects 
anything approaching the bitter 36-day stalemate that gripped this state that 
year. Still, Democrats and their supporters have already filed 11 lawsuits 
alleging various electoral violations, according to a count kept by 
Republicans. And both sides are bracing for more lawsuits, with most polls 
showing Florida to be in a dead heat.

"This feels more like the recount," Mindy Tucker Fletcher, a senior 
Republican strategist who was here in 2000, said on Wednesday. "I don't 
take phone calls from reporters on issues. I take phone from reporters on 
missing absentee ballots, or Democrat charges about suppressing the black 
vote. I rarely take phone calls about the president and education."

Nearly every day in the last two weeks, the president or a former president, 
presidential candidate or vice-presidential candidate, has touched down in 
Florida, drawing huge crowds whose passion and rage leave little doubt that 
the outcome here this time could prove just as pivotal, and just as corrosively 
inconclusive, as four years ago. 

With Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry coming back here this weekend - 
their running mates campaigned in Florida on Wednesday - this state has 
assumed its place as the prime battleground of the election and a template 
for the unease rippling across the country as it awaits Tuesday's balloting.

"When I came here this morning, I felt like beginning by saying, 'Now where 
were we again?' " Al Gore, who saw his hopes for the presidency dashed 
here in 2000, said wryly at a rally in Coconut Creek in Broward County the 
other afternoon. "Four years seems like four hours because we are in the 
same struggle for our country's future."

Bill Clinton, casting an eye on a crowd that filled a city block in Miami the next 
night, said: "Remember: we won this state the last two times; the last time 
they didn't count it. We can win it again." 

Mr. Clinton's huge audience responded with outstretched hands and cheers. 
And the intensity of feeling is red hot on both sides of the political divide.

"Bush is a liar," Gene Conrad, a 65-year-old teacher from Jupiter, said after 
hearing Mr. Kerry deliver a speech on religion the other day. "He lied us into 
war. And I cannot vote for anyone who is dumber than I am."

Across the state in Fort Myers, Bobbie Golfes, the manager of a county 
association, said: "John Kerry is not a statesman. He doesn't have America 
at heart. I have a grandson who is a marine, and I am proud to have him 
serve under George Bush. I do not feel that way about John Kerry."

Though several South Florida news organizations reported on Tuesday and 
Wednesday that tens of thousands of voters had not yet received absentee 
ballots that the Broward County elections office had sent them several weeks 
ago, Brenda Snipes, the county elections supervisor, said Wednesday night 
that the number was much smaller. 

Ms. Snipes said the office had received numerous complaints from people 
whose ballots were sent out between Oct. 7 and Oct. 21, but that it was 
unclear how many had not received them. She said they would send 
replacement ballots by overnight mail to about 400 people who lived outside 
the county, and by regular mail to perhaps 2,000 or more living in the county.

The United States Postal Service issued a statement on Wednesday saying it 
was handling absentee ballots "as expeditiously as possible," and had 
"identified no delays in our handling of balloting materials or actual ballots."

Counties throughout Florida are handling record requests for absentee 
ballots this year, partly because both political parties have encouraged that 
method of voting, in addition to the emphasis on early voting. Broward 
officials told The Sun-Sentinel that 126,220 people had requested absentee 
ballots as of Tuesday.

A spokesman for Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County elections 
supervisor, said her office had mailed more than 125,000 absentee ballots 
and was sending out several thousand more each day. Many Palm Beach 
County residents have also complained about not receiving absentee ballots 
that they requested weeks ago.

Though Broward and Palm Beach Counties are heavily Democratic, Ms. 
Tucker Fletcher said many Republicans were among those who had not 
received ballots from the county elections offices.

Most polls, including nightly ones by the campaigns here, show Mr. Bush and 
Mr. Kerry in a near tie. But pollsters are nervous about their findings because 
of all the new forces tearing up the Florida electoral landscape in this post-
2000 world, starting with a surge of 1.6 million new voters added to the rolls, 
and predictions that voter turnout could break records.

Not incidentally, this is also the first presidential election that has included 
extensive use of early voting, and that has already produced long lines of 
people that have served as graphic evidence of just how interested people 
are in this election. Aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry estimate that more than 
one million people have already voted early or by absentee ballot, a number 
that has stunned them.

Both sides had been gearing up for a contest that could be determined by 
two things: Get-out-the-vote efforts before Election Day and litigation after the 
vote was done.

Even so, the apparent tightness of the contest here has surprised some 
Republicans who thought that the hurricanes that whipped through this state 
in August and September - leading to a series of images of Mr. Bush helping 
Floridians in need, and keeping Mr. Kerry away - would allow Mr. Bush to 
spend more of his time and energy in states like Ohio.

On Wednesday, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney, campaigning in 
Kissimmee, south of Orlando, made a point of reminding voters of the natural 
disasters of the past two months, and the White House's role in helping out.

"The state has been through a lot with Hurricanes Charley, Jeanne, Frances 
and Ivan," Mr. Cheney said, according to the White House transcript of his 
speech, adding: "The president and I applaud all of your efforts. And we want 
you to know the federal government is doing everything it can to help. 
President Bush has approved $13.6 billion for the people of Florida and other 
states hit by the hurricanes."

But aides to both campaigns said Mr. Bush did not get the boost from the 
hurricanes that he had hoped for. Instead, Mr. Kerry's aides contend, the 
hurricanes here meant that Floridians were never exposed to some of the 
coverage of difficult months for the Kerry campaign - from the attacks on his 
war record by some Vietnam veterans to accounts of turmoil in his campaign 
- and saved Mr. Kerry here from the downturn he suffered in the rest of the 
country.

The early turmoil and litigation come as Florida has been pushing the 
envelope on various voting procedures, in particular absentee ballots, which 
are expected to favor Republicans, and early voting, which is expected to 
favor Democrats. 

"You don't have to wait until Nov. 2 to vote," Mr. Kerry's running mate, 
Senator John Edwards, said at a rally here just south of Miami on 
Wednesday. "We don't want you to wait until Nov. 2 to vote."

Mr. Edwards's remarks reflected the calculation of Democrats, and the belief 
of some independent analysts, that a high turnout, particularly in the form of 
early voting, would help Mr. Kerry. Democrats and some independent 
analysts argued that a high turnout would be part of the backlash from 2000 
and would reflect an increased number of minority voters and young voters 
who are more likely to support Mr. Kerry. 

"Everything I see suggests that there's going to be a pretty high turnout on 
Tuesday, and that, in my opinion, would be better for Kerry," said Jim Kane, 
chief pollster for Florida Voter, a nonpartisan polling organization.

Mr. Kane said early voting could prove beneficial to Democrats because, if 
they succeeded in getting their most fervent supporters to vote before Nov. 2, 
that would give them more flexibility to turn out more reluctant voters on 
Election Day.

But Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, argued that the 
Republicans had more than kept up with Democrats in getting their 
supporters out to the polls early, and that the party continued its advantage 
on absentee voters.

"Over all, you look at Florida, we have a broader, deeper organization," Mr. 
Mehlman said. "I think the president's numbers are stronger."

Steve Rosenthal, the chief executive of America Coming Together, a 
Democratic organization that has set up extensive get-out-the-vote 
operations here, said that Republicans in the state had gone toe to toe with 
Democrats on voter registration over the past years.

But Mr. Rosenthal disputed Mr. Mehlman's contention that Republicans had 
done as well or better in getting their supporters to the polls before Election 
Day.

"On early voting, we have cleaned their clocks," Mr. Rosenthal said.

State officials moved on Wednesday to assure state residents who did not 
get their absentee ballot that they would not be disenfranchised. 

Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda Hood, 
said people who did not receive absentee ballots could still vote in person, at 
early-voting sites or on Election Day. Ms. Faraj said Ms. Hood was extremely 
concerned about the problem. 

Herman Post, who said he divided his time between Connecticut and Boca 
Raton, said he called the Palm Beach County elections office 10 days ago to 
inquire about a ballot he requested in September, and was told it had been 
mailed on Oct. 12.

When Mr. Post still had not received the ballot by Wednesday, he said, he 
called back.

"They say they never mailed me one, that there's no record from me having 
applied for it," he said. "I think there's obviously some phony baloney going 
on down there."

Mr. Post, 82, said he would drive to Florida to vote, leaving Connecticut at 
dawn on Sunday.


Adam Nagourney reported from Kendall, Fla., for this article, and Abby 
Goodnough from Miami. William Yardley contributed reporting from Broward 
County, Fla.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | 

----

CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT!  
FLORIDA'S COMPUTERS HAVE ALREADY COUNTED THOUSANDS OF 
VOTES FOR GEORGE W. BUSH

Before one vote was cast in early voting this week in Florida, the new
touch-screen computer voting machines of Florida started out with a
several-thousand vote lead for George W. Bush.  That is, the mechanics of
the new digital democracy boxes "spoil" votes at a predictably high rate
in African-American precincts, effectively voiding enough votes cast for
John Kerry to in a tight race, keep the White House safe from the will of
the voters.

Excerpted from the current (November) issue of Harper's Magazine
by Greg Palast

To understand the fiasco in progress in Florida, we need to revisit the
2000 model, starting with a lesson from Dick Carlberg, acting elections
supervisor in Duval County until this week. "Some voters are strange,"
Carlberg told me recently. He was attempting to explain why, in the last
presidential election, five thousand Duvalians trudged to the polls and,
having arrived there, voted for no one for president. Carlberg did concede
that, after he ran these punch cards through the counting machines a
second time, some partly punched holes shook loose, gaining Al Gore160
votes or so, Bush roughly 80.

"So, if you ran the 'blank' ballots through a few more times, we'd have a
different president," I noted.  Carlberg, a Republican, answered with a
grin. 

So it was throughout the state - in certain precincts, at least.  In
Jacksonville, for example, in Duval precincts 7 through 10, nearly one in
five ballots, or 11,200 votes in all, went uncounted, rejected as either
an 'under-vote' (a blank ballot) or 'over-vote' (a ballot with extra
markings). In those precincts, 72 percent of the residents are
African-American; ballots that did make the count went four to one for Al
Gore. All in all, a staggering 179,855 votes were "spoiled" (i.e., cast
but not counted) in the 2000 election in Florida. Demographers from the
U.S. Civil Rights Commission matched the ballots with census stats and
estimated that 54 percent of all the under- and over-voted ballots had
been cast by blacks, for whom the likelihood of having a vote discarded
exceeded that of a white voter by 900 percent.

Votes don't "spoil" because they are left out of the fridge.  Vote
spoilage, at root, is a class problem.  Just as poor and minority
districts wind up with shoddy schools and shoddy hospitals, they are stuck
with shoddy ballot machines.  In Gadsden, the only black-majority county
in Florida, one in eight votes spoiled in 2000, the worst countywide
record in the state. Next door in Leon County (Tallahassee), which used
the same paper ballot, the mostly white, wealthier county lost almost no
votes.  The difference was that in mostly-white Leon, each voting booth
was equipped with its own optical scanner, with which voters could check
their own ballots. In the black county, absent such "second-chance"
equipment, any error would void a vote.

The best solution for vote spoilage, whether from blank ballots or from
hanging chads, is Leon County's: paper ballots, together with scanners in
the voting booths. In fact, this is precisely what Governor Bush's own
experts recommended in 2001 for the entire state.  His Select Task Force
on Elections Procedures, appointed by the Governor to soothe public
distrust after the 2000 race, chose paper ballots with scanners over the
trendier option -- the touch-screen computer.

Although the computer rigs cost eight times as much as paper with
scanners, they result in many more spoiled votes.  In this year's
presidential primary in Florida, the computers had a spoilage rate of more
than 1 percent, as compared to one-tenth of a percent for the
double-checked paper ballots.

Apparently some Bush boosters were not keen on a fix so inexpensive and
effective. In particular, Sandra Mortham - a founder of Women for Jeb
Bush, the Governor's re-election operation - successfully lobbied on
behalf of the Florida Association of Counties to stop the state the
legislature from blocking the purchase of touch-screen voting systems. 
Mortham, coincidentally, was also a paid lobbyist for Election Systems &
Strategies, a computer voting-machine manufacturer.   Fifteen of Florida's
sixty-seven counties chose the pricey computers, twelve of them ordered
from ES&S which, in turn, paid Mortham's County Association a percentage
on sales.

Florida's computerization had its first mass test in 2002, in Broward
County. The ES&S machines appeared to work well in white Ft. Lauderdale
precincts, but in black communities, such as Lauderhill and Pompano Beach,
there was wholesale disaster. Poll workers  were untrained,  and many
places opened late.  Black voters were held up in lines for hours. No one
doubts that hundreds of Black votes were lost before they were cast.    

Broward county commissioners had purchased the touch-screen machines from
ES&S over the objection of Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant; notably,
one commissioner's campaign treasurer was an ES&S lobbyist. Governor Bush
responded to the Broward fiasco by firing Oliphant, an African-American,
for "misfeasance."

Even when computers work, they don't work well for African-Americans.  A
July 2001 Congressional study found that computers spoiled votes in
minority districts at three times the rate of votes lost in white
districts.

Based on the measured differential in vote loss between paper and computer
systems, the fifteen counties in Florida, can expect to lose at least
29,000 votes to spoilage-some 27,000 more than if the counties had used
paper ballots with scanners.   

Given the demographics of spoilage, this translates into a net lead of
thousands for Bush before a single ballot is cast.

---

For the full story, read "Another Florida" in the November issue of
Harper's, out now.  Mr. Palast, a contributing editor to the magazine, is
author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
 See the film of his investigative reports for BBC Television, "Bush
Family Fortunes," out now on DVD.  Watch a segment at
www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

To sign up to receive Greg's writings click here:
http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

For media contact media at gregpalast.com

---



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