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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFlorida early vote totals revised, raising questions
Broward is a Democratic stronghold that Barack Obama is expected to carry by a large margin. But initial early vote totals reported by the office of the Broward Supervisor of Elections changed on Sunday, in some cases dramatically, causing some to question the numbers.
An analysis of the unofficial totals by early voting location on the Broward Supervisor of Elections website from Saturday, compared to the tallies posted on Sunday, shows that in one location, the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, located on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Pompano Beach, the revised totals showed 1,003 fewer votes. The initial tally reported from the polling place in the heavily black neighborhood showed 2,945 votes, but the revised tally was 1,401. Across the 17 Broward polling locations, 15 saw their vote totals revised, mostly by minute amounts of between 1 and 7 votes. But the three more significant changes, including the addition of 398 votes in Tamarac (a racially mixed community) and adding 99 votes to the totals from Pompano Beach City Hall, whose demographic is majority white.
The revisions mean that 536 fewer total votes were reported in Broward a reduction from 28,330 votes to 27,794 votes. That could be significant in a close election in a state where the presidential contest was decided by just 538 votes in 2000.
And so it begins?
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)villager
(26,001 posts)...for them not to steal it again and again?
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)Not even pretending anymore!
Baitball Blogger
(46,714 posts)liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)She can't take too much more of what we had through Reagan and 2 Bushs.
Baitball Blogger
(46,714 posts)Then he's going to get a rare opportunity to clean up the problem. If he does it, he might be able to clean up the networks in Florida which make this election uncertainty in Florida a recurring nightmare. But it will be tough, because this kind of dirty tricks doesn't last this long without there being something going on between parties.
Drab
(54 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)formercia
(18,479 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,714 posts)progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)Anyone else remember her?? She's "looking into" the missing votes.
CoffeeCat
(24,411 posts)Don't most election processes have Democrats and Republicans making these counts?
Or does Karl Rove get to sit alone in a room, determine the numbers and then report them?
I don't see how this happens?
Everyone knows that Florida has been a disaster, when it comes to voting. I can't believe that they could get away with revisions like this.
Boggles the mind.
marions ghost
(19,841 posts)There could be a very simple explanation. I have no idea, said David Brown, a political consultant who is working for three Broward candidates, and who downloaded the Sunday early vote totals Sunday morning, only to be asked later by a colleague for the numbers, which he retrieved from his phone. When he looked at the revised totals, the Pat Larkins number stood out. Almost every one of the precincts changed, Brown said. Some by two or three, one by about 100. But the Pat Larkins Center, thats more than a thousand votes. Im curious why.
Brown said that when he inquired about the numbers, he was told by the elections office that the changes had resulted from a computer glitch.
Broward SOE spokesperson Mary Cooney acknowledged that the Sunday totals were revised, and said she would look into why.
I cant tell you definitively now, Cooney said, but I queried the person who posts those numbers and the most significant number he told me he changed was an instance where 1050 should have been 1150 the numbers were transposed.
Cooney said that the process for posting election results is that one individual receives the data from the polling places, which call in their results when polls close. Then a second individual posts all of the results to the elections website.
Broward Supervisor of Elections Dr. Brenda Snipes could not be reached for comment
(from the OP's link)
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And so now--can we RECOUNT those precincts? Seems like there's plenty of time .......IF there's a paper trail.....
pa28
(6,145 posts)What a coincidence.
Seriously though, I hope somebody with knowledge of their process chimes in here. If the votes were tabulated and then sent in the precinct people should be able to double check this.
ecstatic
(32,704 posts)do something about this election, but how can we make sure all voting machines have a paper trail before 2014?
formercia
(18,479 posts)We will all be voting on Bain owned machines.
siligut
(12,272 posts)Do you really think this hasn't been required? The problem is that the states are in control and when we find laws that can trump that, they drag it out in court and then a judge throws it out EFT.
ecstatic
(32,704 posts)It almost lends credence to the conspiracy theorists who think that elections are predetermined by the bilderberg group or whoever.
siligut
(12,272 posts)There appears to be a fair amount of collusion in the Republican party actually.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)without an explanation, audit trail, backup, etc. this is bullshit.
Blueprogress
(64 posts)I live in Broward, this bullshit. What does Snipes have to say about this? I am texting this article to everyone I know. BS.
siligut
(12,272 posts)With power outages, the DRE machines aren't going to be used, so they can't flip votes. Now they need FLA, because PA, VA and OH aren't guaranteed.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)tandem5
(2,072 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)We need more than just hollering "GOTV" to deal with this kind of scenario.
The more they get away with the more they'll steal, edit, or delete until the actual numbers don't matter anymore.
We have a situation that threatens the democratic process to the roots here.