Early voting snags in Florida raise concerns for Election Day

BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES, NIKKI WALLER AND DAVID OVALLE

Knight Ridder Newspapers   18 October 2004

MIAMI - (KRT) - Early voters crowded precincts across Florida on Monday, but long waits in Miami-Dade County, computer glitches in Broward County around Fort Lauderdale and other problems cropped up, raising concerns for the Nov. 2 presidential election.

The last thing Florida elections officials want is a replay of the 2000 presidential-election disaster, when ballot challenges and court fights left the election unresolved for 36 days until the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state's recount halted and George W. Bush was declared the winner.

In Broward, long delays and massive confusion marred the start of early voting as the remote system at nine polling sites collapsed. The problem made it impossible to electronically confirm voters' eligibility. Workers instead used paper lists and called the election supervisor's office.

By about 10:30 a.m., two hours after polls were scheduled to open, 20 to 30 people had left Hallandale Beach City Hall without voting, city officials said.

"I've never seen anything like this in my life," said Marjorie Jacobs, 90, of Hallandale Beach, who went home after waiting two-and-a-half hours in vain. "I'm coming back and voting on Election Day."

Miami-Dade elections officials reported no significant problems as thousands of people reported to 20 polling sites, but isolated waits of more than three hours forced some people to give up before voting.

"The most important thing is to do everything correctly," Seth Kaplan, spokesman for Miami-Dade elections, said of the delays. "As time goes on we'll redeploy resources. That's not to say we think everything is going perfectly, but one side effect that comes with (high interest) is long lines."

Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said the county's electronic voting machines worked fine and there was no connection between the malfunction and the machines.

"The meltdown was these laptops," Snipes said.

Computerized verification was restored at most of the polling places by mid-afternoon, though clerks at Oakland Park had to validate voters by phone until nearly 6 p.m.

In Palm Beach County, the focal point of the infamous 2000 presidential recount, State Rep. Shelley Vana, a Democrat, was the seventh person in line at an early voting site. She said the paper absentee ballot she received was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight, The Associated Press reported.

Early voting, introduced in Florida after the troubled 2000 election, gives voters 15 days to cast ballots at any of a variety of locations in their home counties.

With Florida considered a key swing state for the presidential election, both parties are making a huge push to capture every vote, especially through early voting.

Toward that end, hundreds of people - many associated with Democratic-leaning labor, community and activist groups - gathered at a festive "Early Voting Counts" rally at the Miami-Dade Government Center.

They cheered and clapped to "early vote" messages from rappers and a thundering speech from the Rev. Al Sharpton, a former presidential candidate.

"We've come to solve the crime by returning to the scene of the crime!" Sharpton boomed, referring to the hotly contested 2000 elections. "It was not (presidential candidate Al) Gore who was robbed; it was the American people who were robbed."

Sonia Bethel, 43, the first person through the Government Center line, was voting for the first time since becoming a U.S. citizen. A Bahamas native, the nursing home assistant and mother of eight said she arrived at 8 a.m. just so she could be first.

"Because I want to be heard," she said. "I want to make sure my vote is counted."

At about 12:40 p.m., poll workers had handed out 324 voting tickets, but only 109 people had actually voted.

Poll workers had only four laptop computers to verify voter registration. And people were taking more than 10 minutes to finish the complicated ballots, which also contain eight state constitutional amendments and eight general obligation bond questions.

In most Miami-Dade precincts, voters also were upset that voting machines sat empty while the lines grew longer. At the Kendall Regional Library in the Hammocks, many voters waited hours to vote, adding to the concerns from observers.

Kaplan, the Miami-Dade elections spokesman, said there are 100 different ballots in the county - which encompasses many separate localities - for this election, but each voting machine holds only one-third of them. Some machines are used more than others, depending on the voters, he said.

"It's something we'd like to improve in the future but that won't affect the election," he said.

"We're in unchartered territory. We've never used (touch-screen voting) equipment to handle an election this big," said Dan McCrea, of the grass-roots group Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. "Certainly, capacity issues are the main ones we're concerned about."

In Jacksonville, turnout was somewhat lower than expected. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown led rallies but came nowhere near their goal of delivering 1,000 voters. There were rarely more than a dozen people in line at the Supervisor of Elections downtown office, and officials reported no problems.

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