Hordes of election observers flock to Florida
Folks from near, far beat a path to Sunshine State to boost their man, ensure no repeat of 2000.

By MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/23/04

 

Come Election Day, Martha Fagan won't be anywhere close to her home in Morningside. She, like thousands of other Americans, will be in the mother of all battlegrounds: Florida.

Legions of labor organizers, poll watchers, high-powered lawyers and sneaker-clad volunteers from Maine to California are heading to the Sunshine State. They could be joined by an official election monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Driven by memories of hanging chads and court battles, volunteers are giving their all to avoid another election fiasco and hand the candidate of their choice Florida's coveted 27 electoral votes.

"It's my feeling that we are going to have a record number of observers, poll watchers, volunteers and media as Florida is once again dab-smack in the cross hairs in the presidential fight," said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, home to Florida's capital, Tallahassee.

Florida votes count

Other battleground states, such as Ohio, are also expected to be bombarded with helpers and observers. But most Georgians are looking south to their neighbor, where polls show the race between George Bush and John Kerry is too close to call.

"I'd like to go where there's a whole lot of energy and where dialing the telephone and burning some shoe leather . . . may mean the margin of difference," said Fagan, 56, a Kerry supporter.

Andrew Dill, 21, president of the College Republicans at the University of Georgia, said he was organizing at least 20 students to head down to the Georgia-Florida football showdown Oct. 30 in Jacksonville. Dill said his group would join "Dawgs for Bush" and "Gators for Bush" and wave signs, make phone calls and drive voters to the polls over the next 72 hours.

"This is a good way to hit over 100,000 people in a short period of time," Dill said. "We are a safe state, but Florida will be one of the most crucial swing states. We want to spend time where we know we will be effective."

Alan Brock, volunteer coordinator for the Democratic Party of Florida, said interest was definitely high this year.

"I know people who are taking three or four weeks of vacation and planning to be here the entire month of October," Brock said. Early voting in Florida begins 15 days before Nov. 2.

Emma Wilson, 40, of Augusta said she had never been to Florida. Nor has she been this involved in a political campaign before. But a while back she was relaxing poolside when a friend wished out loud that she lived in Florida, "where her vote mattered." Wilson is supporting Kerry, who, polls show, has little chance of winning in Republican-leaning Georgia.

In 2000, a disputed margin of 537 votes handed Florida — and the presidency — to Bush.

"That got me thinking," said Wilson, who has arranged to drive voters to the polls on Election Day. "I'm a mother of three. I have a minivan. I am quite familiar with driving people around."

The Republicans, too, are attracting hordes of volunteers. The Bush-Cheney campaign, spearheaded by the president's brother, Florida Gov Jeb Bush, has mounted a grass-roots campaign that hopes to eventually attract as many as 75,000 volunteers.

Sancho said the number of people registering to serve as poll watchers had also skyrocketed. It used to be that candidates and parties hired poll watchers whose primary task was to make sure their targeted voters showed up. But this year, Sancho said, people simply want to make sure the process is void of irregularities.

Touch-screen doubts

After hanging chads entered the national lexicon, Florida required its 67 counties to switch to electronic touch-screen balloting or to an optical scan system. But some voters have lingering doubts about the electronic ballots, which, because no paper trail is generated, cannot be subjected to later public scrutiny. That controversy has helped generate additional interest.

Thirteen Democratic members of Congress asked the United Nations to send monitors. Others wondered about the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which monitors elections abroad and most recently did so in Venezuela.

The United Nations declined, saying a request to monitor elections must come directly from the White House. And the Carter Center is focused abroad and gets involved in elections only when welcomed by all parties.

'None of their business'

The State Department, however, has invited the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to send international monitors who would observe and document the presidential election. The world's largest regional security organization plans to send a preliminary mission to Washington next month.

Rory Dubin, 39, listed as a top volunteer recruiter on the Bush-Cheney Web site, said he was confident the election would run smoothly in Florida. Dubin, a resident of Sarasota, welcomed volunteers whose aim would be to get out the vote but objected to too many outsiders involved in an election that is "none of their business."

But Lance Block, a Florida attorney who helped mount legal challenges to disputed ballots on behalf of Al Gore, said the more the merrier. He said both political camps were amassing an army of lawyers to keep an eye out the proceedings Nov. 2.

"I am amazed by the number of people who want to make sure we don't have a repeat of 2000," Block said. "It's a good thing. We can use their help."