BlogWood: MT Archives

Provisional ballots no panacea

Record numbers of new voters will by swarming the polls this year, and many will undoubtedly have problems.

Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson, Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections, had major problems conducting August’s primary vote, including the loss of hundreds of votes, and, it seems, he is having a hard time processing all the new voter registrations his office is getting.

...... Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson announced a record-breaking 19,000 last- minute voter registration applications received by Monday's deadline. The mountain of paperwork means not all may receive a voter identification card during the four weeks before the election, according to his office.

That's why authorities are urging new voters to check their registration status online, if possible, but the ease of this varies by state. Hillsborough voters can check by telephone with the election supervisor's office.
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One trouble spot could be provisional ballots. These are used when voter registration is in doubt, for those erroneously purged from voter rolls or for first-time voters who signed up by mail and have identification problems at the polls.

Now, Jeb!’s Buddy knew damn well that he was gonna get flooded with applications - it’s a well documented trend this year. So why didn’t he hire extra staff or schedule some serious overtime to deal with the last minute apps? Uh, could it be that most new registrations are Democratic?

Ah, but if a voter has problems on election day, as the article says, a provisional ballot is available to make sure that all votes are counted. Oh, wait...

Across Florida, two of every five provisional ballots cast in the primaries were thrown out, a survey by the St. Petersburg Times found.

Canvassing boards rejected 41 percent of the approximately 2,000 provisional ballots cast in the primaries.

The 851 rejected ballots make up a tiny fraction of the total vote, normally not enough to change the outcome of an election. But that could have changed the course of the presidency in 2000, when President Bush won by 537 votes.

Labor unions with Democratic ties have gone to court to make sure more provisional ballots count. They say the votes could change Florida's election if the presidential race is as tight as it was in 2000.
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The AFL-CIO and other labor unions say a state law requiring provisional ballots in a voter's assigned precinct is unconstitutional. The Florida Constitution requires only that voters cast ballots in their home county, lawyers say.

The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments next week and may rule before the Nov. 2 election.

Ron Labasky, a lawyer who represents the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, predicted widespread turmoil if the high court ordered counties to count all provisional ballots.

The ballots were designed to eliminate problems from 2000, when voters were turned away from the polls when workers mistakenly thought they weren't registered to vote or were felons prohibited from voting.

The Times survey found that the highest number of rejected provisional ballots were in Duval, Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the same counties that figured prominently in the 2000 recount.

Hillsborough and Pinellas threw out more than half of their provisional ballots. Orange County rejected 80 percent.

The reasons varied: Scores of people were not registered to vote after all. Others had voted in the wrong precinct. A few were felons and ineligible to vote.

WTF? “Widespread turmoil?” From counting democratically cast votes?

Anyway, provisional ballots aren’t gonna be a cure-all, which is scarey, considering all the problems that are already beginning to emerge.

Law enforcement officials are investigating voter registration irregularities in at least three counties in Florida, and election supervisors fear that the problem is so widespread it could lead to massive confusion on Election Day.

Third-party groups, including tax-exempt organizations known as 527s that engage in political activity, have been conducting voter mobilization drives in an attempt to persuade new or apathetic voters to turn out in support of their causes — mostly Democratic — on Nov. 2.

But problems with the applications, already reported to authorities in Miami-Dade, Duval, Monroe, Leon, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, could result in people who thought they had registered showing up at the polls only to discover they aren't eligible to vote.

Officials are investigating in Miami-Dade, Leon and Pinellas counties.

Of the forms collected by the voter mobilization groups, many are incomplete, have suspicious signatures or may have been forged, elections officials said Wednesday.

They have created an accountability problem that the legislature is expected to address in the session beginning in March, the incoming Senate president said.

Supervisors are concerned about "the quality and the timeliness of the work being received" and about the lack of accountability for the application-gatherers, said Bill Cowles, Orange County supervisor of elections and president of the statewide supervisors' association.

Supervisors have 15 days after the Oct. 4 closing date to report new registrations to the state Division of Elections. Potential voters whose applications were incomplete or unsigned are out of luck if they did not correct their forms by the deadline.

Applications bundled

Many of the third-party groups delivered bundles of applications, some collected as long ago as January, on the final day. Cowles said he received about 15,000 registration applications Monday, which he called "a disservice to voters."

"It is taking the control, the education and the accuracy of the work out of our hands," he said.

Voters who have not received registration cards by the end of October should call their elections office to check on the status of their applications and to find out where their polling places are, Cowles said.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating voter registration irregularities in Miami-Dade County and anticipates more complaints as supervisors sort through the applications, a spokesman said Monday.

In Leon County, elections officials are investigating 1,500 applications, including many from Florida A&M University students that were photocopied. All were for registration as Republicans.

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said most of the students contacted by his office indicated they had chosen "No Party Affiliation" and his office registered all of the applicants as independent.

In St. Petersburg, the state attorney's office is investigating allegations that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group pushing the minimum-wage ballot initiative, fraudulently changed party affiliations on voter-registration applications.

Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said she received dozens of applications collected by an unknown third party at a high school, all completed in the same handwriting and with similar signatures. LePore plans to send them to state elections officials but said the questionable applications left her in a quandary.

The 1995 National Voter Registration Act, known as the "Motor Voter Act," took registration out of the exclusive domain of supervisors.

"It's also opened the door for fraud," LePore said. "We can't investigate unless there's something really glaring."

It is a third-degree felony to lie on a voter registration application, but state law provides for no penalty for those who sign up voters but do not hand in the paperwork or wait until the last minute, depriving voters of the opportunity to make corrections.

Does anyone else see a huge loophole for Rethuglican trickery here? Let’s see: an organization can “lose” any apps that do not have the right party affiliation. Or perhaps just hold apps ‘til the last minute, causing confusion and headaches.

Mix in a thousand or so obviously questionable registrations, spread the word that Democratic organizations are being sloppy, start talking early and often about provisional ballot and registration fraud, and the stage has been set to throw hundreds of thousands of new voters’ votes into question.

Keep a wary eye out for the words “integrity” and “fraud” (pdf file) in the coming weeks.

Finally, for those who think this is a minor issue that only affects a handful of voters, remember that the 2000 election was not stolen with one overwhelming tactic - it was a combination of dozens or more cases of disenfranchisement in Florida combined with old-fashioned thuggery during the recount fight, the death of a thousand cuts.

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