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Edited on Sat Nov-27-04 01:51 PM by berniew1
Palm Beach County Voter Suppression
www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp?sort=state&selectstate=FL&selectproblemtype=ALL
1. State legislator received an incomplete absentee ballot when she chose paper instead of the touch-screen.
2. An unknown number of absentee ballots went out without a second page containing proposed amendments to the state constitution.
LePore said she received one report of a blank page on a ballot. She attributed that to a printing problem. She said there have been "sporadic" reports of people receiving incomplete ballots, but the problem is not widespread
3. Sequoia was late delivering absentee ballots to Hillsborough, Pinellas, Palm Beach, and Indian River Counties.
4.State Sen. Ron Klein received large numbers of complaints with voters unable to confirm the status of their request for an absentee ballot. Many of them requested a ballot online but said
they couldn't confirm whether their request was processed. When their ballot didn't arrive, they called their elections office, which had no record of their request. In some cases, by the time they realized a ballot wasn't on its way, it was too late. Hundreds of voters —— including Klein's son, a student at the University of Michigan —— couldn't vote because their early orders for ballots disappeared. Though elections supervisors blamed postal workers for delays getting
ballots to voters on time, Klein doesn't. "Direct mail is done in the billions of parcels each year," the state Senate minority leader said.
5. The Palm Beach County canvassing board rejected as many as 2,000 absentee ballots, most of which lacked signatures, but also many that had signatures that didn't match those on file with the elections office. LePore said she used public service announcements and voters' registration cards to inform people about updating their on-file signatures. But few do that, she said.
Cohen and the rest of the three-member canvassing board —— LePore and Marcus, who is chairwoman of the county commission —— said they were extra careful with the ballots of older voters, and both Cohen and Marcus said they relied on LePore's expertise to make many of
the handwriting evaluations. LePore said many of the signatures that didn't match were actually those of recently registered voters. "I don't know if they were signing a clipboard and they were in a hurry and signed more carefully with their absentee ballot or what," she said.
7. The waiting time at some polling places on Friday was more than five hours. Shouting matches at voting spots have become common, and vandalism is rampant.
8. LePore instituted a ban on media near polls and county offices. A widely published investigative journalist was tackled, punched and arrested Sunday afternoon by a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy who tried to confiscate his camera outside the elections supervisor's
headquarters
9. In the second day of early voting, touch screen machines failed and had to be replaced. One machine froze as a voter was voting.
10. After a woman finished voting, she realized the touch-screen hadn’’t given her the option to vote on the two referendums for Boca Raton or for state House District 87. She was given the
wrong ballot because the computer was programmed for the wrong ballot, but she can't re-vote.
11. Review screen doesn't match selections. Poll worker agrees, after scrolling back through the selections. Vote recorded for candidate different than the one touched.
12. Voters in Pompano Beach discovered at the last minute their precinct had been moved from the Pompano Beach Civic Center to a nearby church. The discovery was made after an unknown
number of voters had cast provisional ballots at the Civic Center. Precinct 1C has 1,200 registered voters. A similar problem was discovered Tuesday morning at Precinct 72Q in
Weston, which has 1,920 voters. These provisional ballots will not count. In the Pompano Beach case, neither the clerk nor the voters said they were aware of the address change.
13. Turia Hayden, a spokeswoman for Election Protection, said some voters, particularly in African-American neighborhoods, had problems locating their correct polling place because some voting sites were relocated in the wake of the hurricanes. When they showed up to vote at the old location, they found no signs or other assistance to help them find the new polling place.
14. Review screen doesn't match selections. Poll worker agrees, after scrolling back through the selections, and tells voter to cast the ballot anyway.
15. Florida voters can't use provisional ballots except in their home precincts, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday. Secretary of State Glenda Hood applauded the decision because it will help ensure an orderly election. But 90 polling places were destroyed by the hurricanes and many of those voters will not know where to vote.
16. A small number of voters who went to the wrong precinct in Pompano Beach, Fla., were given provisional ballots by poll workers, which the county acknowledged was a mistake. In Florida, provisional ballots must be cast in a voter's exact precinct.
17. Thousands of provisional votes were not counted, many because the votes were cast in the wrong precinct. Unlike 17 other states, Florida doesn't allow people to cast provisional ballots
anywhere in their home county. To be counted, the ballot has to be cast at the polling place for the person's assigned precinct. Palm Beach County Judge Barry Cohen, who chairs the county's
elections canvassing board, said it pained him to reject ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct."I was not happy with rejecting the ballots of those people who went to all the trouble to
register, went to the polls and went through all the other hoopla and then, because they voted in precinct 1028 instead of 1064, their vote didn't count," he said. "The law is clear, but the law is
not right," he said.
18. Sequoia DRE. A routine test of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machines was canceled Tuesday because the computer network at the elections office malfunctioned hours before the public exercise.
19. Poll workers closed the election on machines, rather than just shutting down for the night. Machines can't be used again in the election.
20. A patriotic American and registered independent, Tina Knight had trouble believing widespread voter fraud could occur in this country. But after acting as a nonpartisan observer Nov. 2 this time around at a precinct in Palm Beach County, she says she's lost faith in the
system. In nine hours Tina says she saw "lowdown tricks" that have made her feel "disgusted, angry -- and yes, energized. But she took a week off from classes in early November and flew to Florida where her mother lives to work as a volunteer with the nonpartisan organization Voter Election Protection. Tina arrived at 6:20 a.m. election day at Palm Beach County Precinct No. 7120. "There were over 100 waiting to vote." Polls opened at 7 a.m. Most people in that
neighborhood, Tina says, "were blue- and pink-collar workers, immigrants and retirees. These are people who have shift jobs. They cannot afford to miss work without getting docked or even
fired."
Soon after the polls opened, problems began. "I started getting people from a neighboring precinct coming to vote." Tina explained they had to vote in their own precinct. "They said they'd been called over the weekend and told to come here. Some people had even been told, while waiting in line at their correct precinct, to come here. "That's the first indication we got that people had been deliberately misinformed," Tina says.
A second incident made Tina even more angry. "Another nearby voting place was in a synagogue. When people in that precinct went to vote, the polling place was closed. There was no notification of where they should go, and there had been no prior written or telephonic
communication. They didn't know what to do."
A few persistent voters had finally gotten calls through to county election headquarters, and had been told they were to vote at the precinct Tina was monitoring. "So our organization went to the
synagogue and put up a note advising people where to come to vote. And the sign disappeared. So we put up another sign with a sign watcher. As soon as he finished his shift, the sign disappeared again."
Tina worked nine hours election day. She talked to a woman who said the voting machine had repeatedly registered the wrong presidential candidate. After 8 or 9 tries, it finally showed the candidate she had selected. Another lady said when she got to her review screen," at the end of the voting process, "the opposing presidential candidate was listed. . . . She called the poll worker and demanded it be fixed. The poll worker went back through the screens" and agreed
the woman had voted for a different candidate than the review screen showed. "The poll worker said, 'The review screen is wrong, but just go ahead and punch the confirmation button.' The woman refused. She made the poll worker cancel out the transaction, and she voted again. But how many people would do that -- go against what the poll worker advised?" After hearing many voters' stories, Tina says, "I have absolutely no good feeling that those machines have integrity."
21. LePore, whose term expires in January, said this election was "very smooth" despite the hype.
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