Absentees could delay vote results

Thousands of absentee ballots coming in at the last minute could make it harder to get timely presidential results from Florida, a state where that could decide the election.

BY ERIKA BOLSTAD AND SAMUEL P. NITZE  Miami Herald   30 October 2004

A last-minute deluge of absentee ballots could keep Florida election workers counting deep into Wednesday morning, potentially delaying presidential returns from the state where 537 votes decided the last election.

It's unlikely the problem would be limited to Broward County, where mix-ups with absentee ballots delayed many voters from receiving ballots until today. County officials said they sent about 13,000 last-minute ballots 3,200 overnight by Fed-Ex alone, with prepaid return envelope. That alone will cost Broward County $23,000.

Other Florida counties have been inundated with thousands of absentee ballots, thanks to unprecedented get-out-the-vote efforts.

But in Broward, the problem could be exaggerated because of complications getting ballots to the 129,000 people who requested them. If voters return 100,000 absentee ballots, each worker in a crew of 30, logging 12-hour days beginning Friday, would have to process about one ballot a minute to finish on time.

''If it means every vote counts, I don't mind waiting until Wednesday,'' said Dan Reynolds, president of the Broward County AFL-CIO.

Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes acknowledged that reaching a final count before Wednesday could be difficult. Under state law, the office has 11 days to certify the election, Snipes said. But most people expect to know the outcome by the time they wake up the day after the election.

''This is a lot of pressure,'' Snipes said, adding that she thought it could be done. ``I feel we're headed in the right direction.''

Some voters, especially college students, weren't so sure. Florida A&M student Torey Alston sent an e-mail announcing his intentions to travel from Tallahassee to cast a vote in person.

But Thursday and Friday, election workers and volunteers stuffed and addressed about 13,000 ballots. Most are duplicate ballots sent to people who didn't get one; some were late-arriving requests.

Complications with absentee ballots have derailed an otherwise smooth run-up to the election. Earlier this week, Snipes worried that 58,000 voters hadn't received ballots sent Oct. 7 and 8. She called in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the U.S. Postal Inspection Office to investigate. No one found any criminal wrongdoing, and postal officials have denied accusations that they bungled the mailings.

Snipes said she now suspects that the original reports of 58,000 missing ballots were exaggerated, and it is only 10,000 to 12,000 ballots that failed to make it to their intended recipients.

On Thursday, her office began scrambling to find out who still needed a ballot. They set up a voter hot line, made 38,000 automated phone calls asking voters if they had received their ballots, and used volunteers to call thousands of out-of-county voters.

On Friday, volunteers raced the clock to stuff an estimated 3,200 absentee ballots into FedEx envelopes for overnight delivery to voters outside the county. The first truck left for the airport around 8:30 p.m. to get a 9:30 flight, said Kimberly Maroe, a county spokeswoman.

Voters who requested an absentee ballot but didn't get one should have a new ballot arriving via FedEx today by noon. The ballot will include a postage-paid FedEx return envelope so they won't have to pay to send it back.

Those ballots and the thousands of others sent out Thursday and Friday must be returned to the office by 7 p.m. Tuesday. Voters can also their ballots off at early voting locations. Postal officials pledged that ballots ped off as late as Tuesday afternoon in mailboxes with mid-afternoon pickup times will be delivered.

''If we get ballots going back to the supervisor of elections as late as Tuesday morning or Tuesday afternoon, we will get them there,'' said Gerry McKiernan, a postal service spokesman.

People on both sides of the partisan fence say they're confident the absentee ballots will be counted fast enough to avoid making Broward the last county to submit its returns. There still aren't as many absentee ballots this year as in 2000, when 146,780 were counted before Florida adopted early voting.

''They go quick,'' said Broward County Commissioner Lori Parrish, who appears on the ballot in the property appraiser's race.

By the end of the day Friday, 62 percent of the estimated 129,000 ballots had been returned.

A crew of 25 started processing absentee ballots Friday morning. They checked names against computer logs of early voters, watched for suspicious signatures, sorted ballots and began running them through high-speed optical scanning machines, where votes are stored to be tallied on Election Day.

Volunteers and election staff will work all weekend to process ballots.

Dozens of volunteers have been helping with the final push to get ballots out, including County Administrator Roger Desjarlais and his wife.

''Each of these ballots represents a human being,'' said Joseph Agostini, a Republican Party spokesman. ``This is terrific what you see here.''