Posted on 09/29/2004 3:10:24 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Flaws could mar presidential race
Roadblocks, fraud case among issues
MIAMI—It's happening again.
Four years after Florida became a national embarrassment for its chaotic voting system, charges of intimidation, disenfranchisement and potential irregularities are swirling across a state which again could determine the country's next president.
Some see a pattern that leads all the way to the door of Governor Jeb Bush. His brother, George W., needed this state to win the White House in 2000 and could need it again Nov. 2.
This year's Florida presidential vote will face unprecedented scrutiny from both U.S. and international observers, but even in the face of such attention, activists and interest groups want answers they can't get from their state legislators.
"One thing we're doing is trying to shed some light on this, because when you do, it's like cockroaches, they have to scatter," said Thomasina Williams, a Miami lawyer and voting rights activist.
In no particular order, they'd like to know why:
Florida law enforcement officers showed up at the doors of elderly African-American voters in Orlando, perhaps the key battleground in this swing state, seeking evidence of voter fraud from bewildered residents.
Ezzie Thomas, a well-known 73-year-old resident of the city — an African-American — is under investigation in that case after the probe had once been closed and has now been reopened in the run-up to the vote.
Police in Jacksonville set up roadblocks in predominantly African-American districts on a primary voting day in August. Was it really to search for lapsed drivers' licences and vehicle registrations, or was it something more sinister? Did they really not know, as they said, that it was voting day?
How, after the scandal of 2000 — when it was revealed that a disproportionate number of blacks were wrongly identified as felons and prevented from voting — did a similar, erroneously bloated list show up again this year. Why were there so many errors when it came to blacks, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, but not Hispanics, who back President Bush in this state?
"There is a pattern here," said Greg Bush, a political scientist at the University of Miami (and no relation to the governor and president).
"This is very serious business, the second time around, and worthy of a national investigation. It is a reflection of the incredibly partisan nature of the electoral system in the state of Florida."
Anger is still so close to the surface after allegations that George W. Bush "stole" the election from Democrat Al Gore here after a 36-day recount and Supreme Court drama, that Greg Bush worries there will be street violence if there are irregularities in 2004.
But there is more.
Gone are the butterfly ballot and the antiquated punch-card voting — with its notorious "hanging chads," replaced in 15 of the most populous counties in this state by touch-screen machines which provide no paper trail of the vote and thus make it impossible to provide an audit of a close vote.
A federal appeals court in Atlanta, Ga., Monday night ordered a lower Florida court to hear a lawsuit brought by a Democratic legislator to force the state to issue paper receipts to voters.
Others point to security problems because the machines must be started the night before voting and it could be months before errors are identified.
Jeb Bush was so certain of the infallibility of his new machines that his government outlawed manual recounts, until that was successfully challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The fiercely partisan nature of the staffing of the election system in this state has even led to accusations that Glenda Hood, the secretary of state and former Orlando mayor, improperly intervened to get Ralph Nader on the ballot here, perhaps foreshadowing a replay of 2000 when Nader's 98,000 Florida votes were blamed by many for putting Bush in office.
"I am deeply disturbed that Governor Jeb Bush and Glenda Hood continue to be an impediment to repairing the disaster of 2000," said Robert Wexler, the Palm County Democrat who brought the lawsuit trying to force the paper trail. "Essentially, Jeb Bush has created another election mess by not fairly applying Florida law and ignoring the constitution.
"From the felon list to inserting Nader on the ballot and voter intimidation tactics, Jeb Bush has led the effort to influence Florida elections."
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, an international election observer, joined the fray in a Monday op-ed written for The Washington Post, maintaining that the problems that vexed this state in 2000 have not been addressed.
Yesterday, Jeb Bush fought back.
"There's this constant haranguing of nonsense, including by President Carter, which is a huge surprise to me because I have admired his compassionate actions in his post-presidency," the governor said. "Without talking to a single person, without getting any information, he joins up with the MoveOn.org (liberal) crowd."
Concerns about touch-screen voting are nothing more than "conspiracy theories," Jeb Bush maintained.
"It's not just little old Floridians crying wolf in the dark," Williams said. "Jimmy Carter believes this is all about partisan politics. He has worked on elections all over the world and he thinks Florida is one of the worst."
There is already proof touch-screen voting is not perfect.
In a special election in Broward County in January, 2004, conducted on a touch-screen machine, the margin of victory was 12 votes. Yet, the computer that tabulated the results found almost 150 ballots cast with no choice.
In state primaries in August, 245 votes were improperly downloaded in Tampa and not discovered until after the vote was certified.
Dan McCrae, of the non-partisan Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, says the touch-screen machines undermine the foundation of democracy — voter confidence. "You as a voter have no option but to trust computer software that cannot be independently tested and you must trust an elections department that does not respect the most basic rules of ethics," he said.
Meanwhile, Ezzie Thomas has gone to ground after working for Democrats in Orlando for decades.
He is alleged to have marked blank absentee ballots for elderly voters, all backing the Democratic candidate for mayor in Orlando.
The Democrat, Buddy Dyer, did pay Thomas $10,000 to show voters how to properly complete their ballots and Thomas delivered. The Democrat swept the absentee ballot.
Beyond that, Thomas maintains, he did no wrong and said he was doing nothing he hadn't done before.
Police visited those who marked absentee ballots, but denied intimidating the elderly voters.
Martha Glenn, 72, said she has known Thomas since she moved from Mississippi in 1966 and he has never tried to influence her vote.
She first met him when he ran a radio and television repair shop in town.
"I don't know what people are trying to do to him," she said.
Williams says the timing of the investigation of Thomas is, at best, suspicious. It sidelines a key member of the Democratic team and puts the entire Democratic operation in Orlando under a cloud during this campaign.
"Somebody has to give orders for these things to happen," Williams said. "Police don't just show up at your door and state troopers in Jacksonville don't just set up roadblocks wherever they feel like it." Additional articles by Tim Harper
Montreal Gazette: If there's trouble in Florida, don't blame chads No paper trail with electronic voting. System prone to software glitches, critics say, and if it crashes ... oh, man
Belfast: Something rotten in the state of FloridaPregnant chads, vanishing voters... the election fiasco of 2000 made the Sunshine State a laughing stock. More importantly, it put George Bush in the White House. You'd think they'd want to get it right this time. But no, as Andrew Gumbel discovers, the democratic process is more flawed than ever.
the biggest scandal is how the Democrats would stoop to any level to make unwarranted accusations that make it appear the GOP did something wrong, when most of the mistakes were made in Democratic districts by democrats. The media still picks up on these lies that the Democrats spread.
Bovine Scatology.
There was no "itimidation or disenfranchisement." That is all Democrat propaganda from the Liberals in the hope to paint them as victims and the protector of miniorities.
The only "irregularities" were counting only hanging chads and pregnant chads from selected counties that had a 7:2 ratio of Democrats vs. Republicans.
The Democrats could not win a football game unless their side had 20 men on the field, the other side 3 men on the field, and the referees were paid off.
The left never yields.
Bush better have a wide margin.
None of us are looking forward to another "Florida vote."
Can anyone determine why these electronic voting receipts are so allegedly important? You don't get a receipt from any other voting method, and they can't seriously be used to verify (or not) a recount. So what practical purpose could they serve?
Is there not a single voting method that the people of Miami-Dade can accept for their citizens?
They'd love to have only one candidate running.
That old communist political system would suit them just fine.
Republicans disenfranchise voters? It was the A.P. who called Florida before the polls closed in the panhandle. I question whether that was an intentional move on their part, but there is no way to prove it. I wonder how many voters went home instead of voting. From what I understand, the panhandle is mostly Republican.
Some of the more lurid allegations of racial discrimination in Florida during the 2000 election, like racial profiling at roadblocks near polling places in black neighborhoods, were never proved, but there is little doubt that African-Americans faced disproportionate difficulties at the polls. In Jacksonville, for example, apparently because of a confusing ballot design, more than twenty-five thousand votes—nine per cent of all ballots cast—were rendered invalid.
With other methods there is something you can check (recount) if an election is contested.
Where I voted this time you mark on paper and the paper is scanned into a machine that compiles the totals, but the paper is still there in case someone says the machine was fixed or whatever.
Where I voted before, we had used the punch card system which worked fine as long as you don't have Carolyn whatsherface and her henchmen poking new holes and bending and twisting the cards (as we saw on TV in Florida 2000) in a recount effort to create new Gore votes.
That method--which is used in Chicago too--has one drawback in that they like to run a long wire down a stack of cards right through the # for their boy, thus creating a vote where people did not vote for that office or disqualifying votes for the other guy(s) because of voting for 2 people and it doesn't hurt their boy at all.
At least in that method you can see what they've done as in Florida when they had soooo many disqualified cards. I don't trust the touch screens with no back up paper trail. If they printed out your vote and you dropped that into a box, then the contents of that box could be counted if the election is contested.
Since the Rats always accuse everybody else of what they have done, are doing, or intend to do; I fully expect massive vote fraud from these touch screen machines plus the usual old fashioned cheating.
BTW almost a year ago the Rat AG in California insisted that the touch screens they just put in would have to be fixed in order to leave a paper trail, but not until AFTER this election.
Suspicions confirmed!
The white Republican male has invented a computer voting machine that smells you when you place your finger on the touch screen.
It rejects all who smell like a Democrat.
Why ... I tell you ... this election is in the bag! ;)
NOTICE TO ALL DIMOCRATS:
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Your vote will not count if you don't touch the screen.
Your vote will not count if you vote for more than one selection for any one candidate for a single office.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Your vote will not count if you vote both yes and no on any one ballot question.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
You will be shot should you vote more than the alloted one vote per voter.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
Please remember to touch the screen to indicate your vote.
I know of one friend in California who was waiting in a long line to vote. Somebody had a radio when the phony Florida call was made and word went through the line to vote. My friend and a whole bunch of others left and went home without voting.
I will never believe that VNS (Voter News Service) sent out phony numbers by accident. I totally believe it was carefully planned and executed. And it almost worked.
I see nothing wrong with getting a personal receipt of one's vote with a copy stored for future recounts. The personal receipts can be done on speciallly embossed paper with inks. If a citizen suspects his vote wasn't being recorded properly, he can take his receipt down to the election office and compare it with the receipt number on file. I find it interesting that it is Democrats mostly who seem to be complaining about the electronic voting systems ....perhaps they've been having trouble figuring out how to gimmy the system!
Some people vote on side issues but they make no choice on the big candidates figuring there is no difference between the two. Some people "protest vote" this way! There-fore, I don't think this means that the system is flawed if there is no choice indicated on a particular vote.
Some people vote "No Choice!"
There's nothing "wrong" with the idea. But if the system is gamed, why couldn't it be gamed to give you an accurate "personal receipt" while storing an inaccurate result in both the voting and the recount record? If someone is able to game the system at all, they can game it at any step in the process. Having a personal receipt is no guarantee that the vote was actually recorded properly.
As I said, no other voting method provides a "receipt", so why is it important here except to provide some warm and fuzzies? It serves no practical purpose, and technically it guarantees nothing.
The problem with voting fraud is a people problem, not a technical problem. Even the simplist systems (e.g., Miami-Dade) will fail if voters and election officials fail.
The only potentiall solution is harsh jailtime for those interfering with a federal election.
What's wrong with a pencil and paper?
The nitwit that wrote this article has brought up every conspiracy theory in the Democratic talking points playbook but the one where the magnetic field of a UFO caused Democrat ballots to mysteriously hang their chads.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.