Missing absentee ballots revision doesn't stop criticism of Broward officials

BY SCOTT WYMAN

South Florida Sun-Sentinel  29 October 2004

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - (KRT) - Even as Broward County election officials announced that the number of missing absentee ballots are far fewer than initially believed, civil rights activists raised fresh concerns Friday about preparations for next week's closely watched presidential election.

After days of scrambling to address what happened to as many as 58,000 absentee ballots mailed this month, Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said she believes fewer than 6,000 did not make it to voters on schedule.

Her staff and volunteers worked into the night Friday to mail 3,000 replacement ballots within the county and send another 3,000 by overnight delivery to residents who are out of the town.

"The whole issue of the absentee ballots was unplanned and unpredicted, but we are on track with our schedule to be ready for Tuesday," Snipes said.

But at the same time, the American Civil Liberties Union charged in a letter to Snipes that she so inadequately equipped the county's more than 800 precincts that voters with registration problems could be disenfranchised when they go to vote Tuesday. The group said that could lead to a repeat of the 2000 election when hundreds were turned away from the polls.

Poll workers must verify the registration of anyone not listed on their voting rolls, but they lack computer access to the countywide list of registered voters. Snipes, instead, provided each precinct with a list of voters in that area and two cell phones for workers to call a help line.

The ACLU said the 2000 election showed phone connections to the elections office cannot be relied on to resolve such problems. Poll workers may not be able to get through due to busy signals, dead batteries or poor reception.

"Some of Broward County's current Election Day plans are woefully inadequate and promise impending disaster if not immediately rectified," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida in his letter to Snipes.

Snipes said she did not have the money to equip each precinct with laptop computers. She said the phone center will be staffed with more than 100 people to address registration and other election issues that develop at the polls.

The Friday night mailing will be the last for absentee ballots as the elections office enters the final days of preparation for Tuesday when some half-million people could go to the polls.

Poll workers picked up their material for Tuesday, as the elections office also processed the absentee ballots that have been returned. Registration and voter signatures on each are checked before the ballots are set aside for counting Tuesday.

More than 127,000 have cast ballots at Broward's 14 early voting sites, where lines Friday began to reach four hours. About 88,000 others have mailed back absentee ballots.

Snipes felt confident she had resolved the missing ballot problems that focused national attention back on Broward to the chagrin of local officials.

She is convinced many ballots in the first batch of 58,600 mailed out on Oct. 7 and 8 were mishandled by the post office as third-class mail, thus taking longer to reach their destination than they should have. Her belief was substantiated by an internal Postal Service memo in which a manager expressed concern that workers were not handling ballots properly.

Few other problems existed with the 128,000 absentee ballots mailed out, she said. About 740 were returned because of faulty addresses, while bar-coding problems resulted in a handful being sent back to voters when they tried to mail them to the elections office.

To attempt to discern the scope of ballot problem, workers attempted to call every voter who requested a ballot be sent outside the county. An automated message from Snipes urged those who requested ballots be sent inside the county to call if they had not received it.

About 200 people contacted outside the area reported not receiving a ballot, while between 1,000 and 2,000 of the calls to a special county hot line were requests for second ballots. The rest of the 6,000 ballots were mailed to people who could not be reached, a move officials said they were taking in an abundance of caution.

"We needed to do what it takes to get the ballots out, and we did it," County Mayor Ilene Lieberman said.

Neither she nor Snipes had an estimate of what the re-mailing will cost the county.

To ensure out-of-town ballots get back in time to be counted, Snipes enclosed a prepaid Federal Express return envelope. Of the out-of-town ballots, 571 were to Republicans and about 2,600 were to Democrats.

For people in town who had not received their absentee ballot, Snipes and Lieberman stressed several options.

They could wait for the new ballot to arrive and then return it by mail or it off at an elections office or early voting center. They also could vote early, vote on Tuesday or call the main elections office in downtown Fort Lauderdale to request an absentee ballot be set aside there and go fill it out on Monday.

Still, some voters expressed a lack of confidence in what had transpired and whether they would receive the ballot they requested.

Naoma Stewart, an 86-year-old retired lawyer who divides her time between Fort Lauderdale and Ohio, said she has not missed voting since 1948, but fears she won't be able to vote this time. She spent most of Thursday on the phone trying to find out why she had not received the ballot she requested in early October and was assured it would arrive Friday. It never came.

"Here we are spending hundreds of millions trying to install democracy at gunpoint in Iraq, and we can't get it right here," Stewart said.