Election 2004: Vote Early and OftenFlorida, the Sequel
Monday, October 18, 2004, 11:36 PM
As anyone who doesn't live on Mars knows by now, early voting started today in Florida, and with it, a host of problems with voting. Who knew?
Here's a survey of some of the problems:
At 9 of 14 sites in Broward County, election workers had to call in voters' names to the main office in Fort Lauderdale, where people would look the name up on the computer there. Why? Because the database connection was down.
In Duval County, the most populous county in Florida, the Supervisor of Elections, John Stafford, resigned suddenly after coming under fire for having only one site open for early voting. By way of comparison, Orange County, with nearly the same population, had 9 sites.
In Orange County, voting stopped a few minutes after it started because (no joke!) of a "faulty internet connection". Who has those computers on the Internet, anyways?! They might as well paint a large bullseye on the side of the box saying "Hack Me Now"!
Statewide, about 80,000 of the folks who were wrongly included on the felons list of ineligible voters from 2000 are probably still on that list.
Statewide, people who show up at the wrong precint and are given a provisional ballot will not have their votes counted, according to a ruling today by the Florida Supreme Court. Unfortunately, some may not get their voter registration cards telling them where to vote, until after Nov. 2; some folks have been relocated because of hurricanes and won't know where to go, and some polling places have been destroyed by storms leaving election supervisors scrambling to find new locations.
Well, that about wraps up day one in Florida. Only 15 to go!
§
