Campaign Spot reader Chuck in Pembroke Pines, Fla., shares a tale of voting this morning that is not all that surprising, and hopefully not too widespread, but dispiriting nonetheless:
Florida just can’t get it right . . . what a surprise, huh?
I vote in precinct X007, Pembroke Pines (Broward County). I was at the poll when it opened at 7 this morning. It was the usual senior citizen volunteer staffed situation. They struggeled with swiping our drivers license to get our names to come up. but God Bless the state, at least it tries to verify us. I was directed to the table for my specific precinct (there are 3 at this particular polling place) and received my paper ballot. I went to the booth, and filled out the first one – only two things to vote on . . . presidential primary, and a local city council race.
I then looked at the 2nd page/ballot, and all it contained was the SAME city council race. Why was I being allowed to vote twice for the city council race? I looked closely at the ballots, and it became obvious. What was SUPPOSED to happen was, if you were a Republican, you were supposed to get the ballot containg both the primary election as well as the local race. If you were a Democrat or Independent, you were supposed to get the ballot for the local race only.
When I went to feed the ballot in to the electronic tabulating device, they encouraged me to put both in. I questioned them, but no one had a clue about dual ballots. I raised hell, but no one seemed to care. I asked for a supervisor, but there was none; one of the volunteers said maybe they would call someone.
I considered making a scene, but really didn’t need to spend my morning getting hauled off to jail.
By the way, notice that this reader is complaining, rightfully, about a snafu that gives Republicans at this polling place the chance to vote twice.
Jimmy, me lad, it's not just Florida. This is why razor thin outcomes always wind up in court with piles of contested ballots and "irregularities." But this is mostly because elections depend on legions of people who volunteer to oversee polling places.
I don't know Florida, but New York has roughly 10000 election districts each of which is supposed to have three election inspectors -- 30,000 people who are paid a small stipend to show up at 6:30 am and stay until whatever time it takes after 9:00 pm to complete a count. Many of these folks do this every year, but many have no idea what they are supposed to do beyond reading the instructions when they arrive.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMakes me wonder if everybody is getting two ballots and giving non-republicans a chance to vote in the primary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusethe same snafu, with the same inattentive volunteers, might also allow Democrats to vote in the Republican primary, providing to them the opportunity to commit mischief.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIts Newts fault...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm the person that sent this to Jim. Everyone was getting both ballots... as I was asking for an explanation another voter came over and she had 2 ballots as well. I don't know if they figured it out after I left, but one of the candidates for the local race was outside shaking hands, and I told him what was happening. If that race comes down to a handful of votes, the loser should be asking a lot of questions.
I also emailed the information to the Sun-Sentinel, and a reporter emailed me back asking a couple questions. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it. It really just comes down to incredibly poor training and supervision of the poll workers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is an interesting story, thanks for publishing it. One would expect that if Republican voters were given an extra ballot for commish, there would be more votes than voters.
299 voters checked in at this precinct; 180 of these cast a ballot in the Republican primary. There were a total of 290 votes for commish, including Republican and nonpartisan. So, either a ton of people undervoted for commissioner and also a lot of people voted twice, or hardly anyone voted twice for commish.
It does look like the Republicany guy won (technically a nonpartisan race, but a Chamber of Commerce guy ran against an incumbent and won). But then again, it looks like 180 Republicans checked in to vote and only 109 nonpartisans, so that might be expected.
Bev Harris
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