One unintended benefit of yesterday’s anniversary of last year’s tragedy was the media shift away from another debacle in South Florida elections. If anyone needs reminders about the 2000 Presidential election, stop reading now and get thee to a doctor, your memory is shot.
Now before everyone says “Florida screwed up again,” let’s look at the statement made by Gov. Jeb Bush:
For the record, Florida has 67 counties. I must give kudos to Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Theresa “Butterfly Ballot” LePore, things ran smoothly this time. But Broward and Dade counties once again proved to the American public they couldn’t elect themselves out of a paper bag.
We had new electronic voting machines in these two counties, the identical ones used in the Tampa area, where they worked fine.
Not so in Miami and Broward counties. Gov. Bush actually had to declare a state of emergency and suspend the state law that says polls closed at 7pm, mandating they all stay open until 9pm to allow for the multitude of late poll openings (as late as 4pm), machines that were not set up properly, and other poll worker-related foul-ups. Problem is, a ton of poll workers in Broward were either not even told of this extension, or decided they wanted to go home anyway and closed up shop. Election Supervisor Miriam Oliphant had better be dusting off her resume.
One 80 year old man was the only poll worker out of TWO precincts at his location who decided to stay to 9pm, as Gov. Bush required. He closed up by himself, loaded the freaking machines into his car, tried to deliver them to the regional collection center after midnight, but the place was closed. He called the sheriff the next morning and they called the elections office. A blazing five hours later someone came by to pick them up from his car. This guy deserves a freaking medal.
I’m moving to Colorado.
