Many problems from 2000 vote fixed; others loom
Throughout Florida, elections officials are feeling pressure.

By John Lantigua

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Federal and state leaders, county elections officials and Florida voters have struggled for four years to exorcise the ghosts of the catastrophic 2000 presidential count.

They rewrote and refined elections law. They purged old, failed voting technologies. In some venues, they banished elections supervisors blamed for the blunders.

In a few instances — Palm Beach County included — old elections headquarters were abandoned as if they were haunted by the havoc of 2000 and no longer habitable.
But the doubts linger.

"You feel it around you every day," says Vicki Cannon, Nassau County elections supervisor, gazing about her office in rural Yulee, near Jacksonville, as if surrounded by enemies. "All that criticism, all that tension."

Palm Beach County made well-publicized changes in its equipment and procedures, which render impossible a repeat of the infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads.

Other key counties in the 2000 fiasco made major overhauls in equipment and procedures. Some changes were dictated by new state guidelines and others were local.

Florida Democratic Party leaders still call those counties "the scenes of the crime," where they say the will of the voters was undone by incompetence or duplicity, abetted by the partisanship of GOP leaders in Tallahassee.

Because of their role in presidential history, the following counties — along with Palm Beach — will be monitored extra closely this year by the major parties, outside observers and the world news media. Here is how they addressed their old problems, along with the new issues to watch Nov. 2:

Duval

In the elections supervisor's office in downtown Jacksonville hangs a large banner. It reads: "America's Best Election." Four years ago, the performance in Duval was anything but.

About 27,000 votes were discarded, more than in any county in the state. A badly designed "caterpillar ballot" that listed presidential candidates on two pages led almost 22,000 people to vote for more than one candidate in that race. None of those votes wound up being counted.

The majority of errors occurred in predominantly black precincts. Because blacks voted about 9-to-1 for Democratic candidate Al Gore statewide, it is believed that the Democrat lost thousands of votes in Duval, enough to sway the election, which finally was decided by 537 votes.

The ballot was designed in the offices where the banner hangs today. Supervisor John Stafford, a Republican, mailed 170,000 sample ballots before the election. The sample instructed voters to vote on each page. When they did, they over-voted in the presidential race and were disqualified.

Some black voters also reported that in 2000, as well as in 2002, their names were missing from voter rolls, or they were asked for more than one type of identification, also a violation of the rules. The problems have created great distrust of Stafford.

"There are other counties that may have problems because of the sheer volume of voters, but in Duval we have to look out for nefarious policies," says Howard Simon, Florida executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Simon says his organization may send black voters with hidden cameras into Duval precincts on Nov. 2 to capture any abuses of power by poll workers.

Stafford is on medical leave and has been replaced temporarily by aide Dick Carlberg. Carlberg is also a Republican but has won the respect of local Democratic leaders, and has eased tensions.

Elections office spokeswoman Erin Moody says the over-vote problem was solved by new state ballot design rules that call for all candidates in a race to be listed on one page, and by optical-scan technology.

"If you vote twice in the same race, the machine spits your ballot back and won't accept it," she says.

As for the identification issue, Carlberg says new state standards, which provide that would-be voters fill out affidavits if they don't have ID, will be adhered to. The canvassing board later decides whether to count the vote.

But a new problem worries Carlberg: In the final days before the Oct. 4 registration deadline, thousands of voters signed up. More than 500,000 are registered, compared with about 425,000 in 2000.

"If they wait until the last moment to show up on Election Day, they may get there after 7 p.m. and not be able to vote," he says. "It could be a problem."

Gadsden

The elections supervisor's office in Quincy occupies a gray-brick Depression-era building just off the town square and not far from the county's sprawling tomato fields. Inside, a sign is posted prominently: "Stamp Out Voter Fraud."

In Gadsden, the only Florida county with a black majority, the sign is serious business. Many voters believe the 2000 election was stolen from them right in that office.

Just as in Duval, the caterpillar ballot struck. People in Gadsden speak of it as they might a boll weevil attacking a cotton crop.

"It got us good," says Sam Palmer, county treasurer for the Democratic Party.

Twelve percent of the 14,727 votes cast in November 2000 were discarded, the highest percentage in the state.

"That can't happen again due to the new ballot design regulations," says Elections Supervisor Shirley Knight, who was voted into office in the 2000 election and is the first black to hold the job.

Some other things can't happen again either, she says. On the night of the 2000 count, Knight, who worked as an aide to then-Supervisor Denny Hutchinson, says he set the central tabulator so that ballots with either no presidential vote or more than one were not separated. That meant they could not be set aside and studied to determine the intent of the voter and possibly be counted.

Knight complained, and Hutchinson was finally overruled by the canvassing board, although eventually many of those ballots were discarded anyway.

"But that can't happen again either," Knight says. "We now tabulate votes in the precincts, and the results are brought here and fed into a computer to get the total. There is no one tabulation point."

Maybe the major change was the election of Knight, who has won good marks for her performance among whites and soothed the fears of blacks.

"I assume it's made a difference," she says. "People seem enthusiastic to vote this time, despite what happened in 2000."

Martin and Seminole

The problems in these counties didn't become apparent until long after the balloting, when the legal wrangling between Democrats and Republicans was in full sway.

Democrats learned that weeks before the Nov. 7 election, elections supervisors in both counties gave GOP activists access to requests for absentee ballots on which voter identification numbers had not been filled out. The Republicans ed numbers, and the absentee ballots were mailed.

Technically, the requests should have been discarded and the absentee ballots not sent. A total of 2,126 requests were involved in Seminole and hundreds more in Martin, all filed by Republicans.

State elections officials eventually allowed the votes to be counted. The Florida Supreme Court upheld that decision, saying regulations had been violated but no intent of fraud was found.

In Seminole, the GOP activists were allowed access to an elections warehouse to fix the requests. Newly elected Seminole Supervisor Dennis Joyner says the problem has been fixed.

"Nobody but elections personnel get into our storage areas or behind our counters," he says.

In Martin, where George W. Bush eventually beat Gore in absentee ballot totals 6,294 to 3,479, Elections Supervisor Peggy Robbins is unrepentant.

"It was the Republicans who sent out those requests to voters in the first place," she says. "Why shouldn't they be allowed to fix them if something was missing?"

Robbins, a Republican who will retire after the November election, says that the issue has not arisen this year because "there was nothing missing" on the absentee ballot requests. She says she has made no change in her policies.

Volusia

Four years ago, at the stately red-brick campus of overwhelmingly black Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, some students who had registered went to the polls but their names were not on the rolls.

They protested, tried to call elections officials, complained loudly to the NAACP, but in most cases got nowhere. How many were not allowed to vote is not clear, but Elections Supervisor Deanie Lowe has addressed the problem.

"There were two precincts on the campus, in two different places, and we think people registered to vote in one precinct and on Election Day went to the wrong one," Lowe says.

This year, Lowe has moved the polling places for both precincts into the same room on campus.

"It is the president's dining room, and it has a beautiful carpet and a chandelier," she says. "And if there is a problem that someone is at the wrong precinct, they simply walk across the room."

The county also has new laptops and cellphones in all precincts for use if registration questions arise.

But a new problem has emerged: Only one early voting site will operate for the county of more than 300,000 registered voters. (Palm Beach County, has six for more than 700,000 voters.)

Lowe says county officials did not approve additional sites when she asked for them in April.

"And now it's just too late to buy machines, find sites, train workers," she says.

The NAACP says it may sue because the lack of additional sites will make it harder to vote.

Orange

Orange County, which uses optical-scan machines, escaped the issues of other large counties that were challenged by chads from punch-card machines.

But the county's Hispanic community, many of whom are Puerto Rican and thus American citizens, presented elections officials with another problem: Spanish-speaking voters could find no one at the polls who could translate.

As of 2000, Hispanics were 18.8 percent of the population in the county, with higher concentrations in certain areas. Federal voting law mandates that precincts with more than 20 percent Hispanics registered be equipped with bilingual poll workers and voting materials in Spanish.

Orange County came up short. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund found 26 instances in which Hispanics were either denied the right to vote or had to argue with poll workers to cast ballots.

The Justice Department later ordered the county to remedy the problem. Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles says he has been able to recruit enough bilingual workers to staff 11 key precincts.

A similar problem has been resolved in Osceola County, which is smaller but had a 29.4 percent Hispanic population in 2000.

Broward

The second most populous county in the state suffered many of the same problems encountered in other locales in 2000, but on a larger scale.

More polling places were moved, confusing voters; polls opened late; more names were missing from voter rolls; lack of phone lines made communication with the supervisor's office difficult; and the number of voters turned away was greater, as was the number of hanging chads.

Supervisor Jane Carroll retired right after the 2000 election, with Miriam Oliphant elected as her replacement. Broward scrapped the punch-card system, which was outlawed, and went to touch screens. Laptops and cellphones were placed in the polling places to improve communication.

But the troubles multiplied in 2002 because of disorganization under Oliphant. In the primary, polls in 24 precincts opened late. The county had a problem with absentee ballots dating to 2000, and it got worse: Months after the 2002 primary, 268 completed absentee ballots were found in a cabinet, uncounted.

Gov. Jeb Bush removed Oliphant, citing "gross carelessness," and replaced her with former educator Brenda Snipes, who conducted a successful primary in August. The old problems have been remedied, says Deputy Supervisor Gisela Salas, including that of absentee ballots.

"We now have a separate P.O. box where the absentee ballots are mailed," Salas says. "We have that very controlled."

What may not be under control is the number of new voters who registered in the past several months. As of Sept. 30, the elections office had from 6,000 to 8,000 new applications that it was still processing, and it received hundreds more before registration closed Monday.

Salas says the elections office hoped to get all voter registration cards out before Nov. 2, but she couldn't be sure it would happen.

The cards do not need to be presented at the polls, but new voters often depend on the cards to tell them where to vote. With Broward's registered voters up from 887,764 in 2000 to more than a million this year, the polling places will already be stressed.

"You can only vote at your own precinct," the ACLU's Simon says. "You can't even file a provisional ballot unless you're at your precinct. It could be bad."

Miami-Dade

A lasting image of 2000 is the white-collar riot at the Miami-Dade elections supervisor's office, when GOP supporters — many from out of state — demanded that a recount of ballots be halted.

They pounded on windows and doors, trying to force their way into a counting room. Supervisor David Leahy suspended the count, although he insisted it wasn't because of the disturbance but because a Florida Supreme Court deadline did not leave time to finish.

Miami-Dade suffered the late-opening polls, rejected voters and chad problems of other counties. Things only got worse in 2002. In the primary, out of 754 precincts, polls at 178 didn't open until after 9:45 a.m., and in 110 polling places at least half the new touch-screen machines didn't work. Polls in some precincts didn't open until 4 p.m. Many would-be voters walked away.

Leahy, the only Florida elections supervisor appointed rather than elected, was eventually fired, and the elections office was moved out of easily accessible downtown Miami. But the touch-screen machines have caused the greatest new problem of the 2004 season: lack of voter confidence because of the lack of a paper trail.

"We are seeing a complete lack of faith in the system," Miami-Dade Commissioner Betty Ferguson said during a recent public meeting. "You have to expect people to be paranoid. An election was stolen in 2000."

Miami-Dade, like Broward, is struggling to get out voter registration cards. About 200,000 new registrants will raise the county rolls to about 1.3 million voters. A record 66,000 absentee ballot requests had been received as of last week. The county also has to deal with about 200 different ballots in three different languages, including Creole.

As for doubts about the touch-screen technology, new Supervisor Constance Kaplan, imported from Chicago, plans to set up a test of the voting machines at county headquarters on Election Day. Those machines, which will be used for demonstration purposes only, will process a predetermined number of votes to prove to voters that the machines are reliable.

But a close election will almost certainly lead to anxiety about the lack of a paper trial. Asked if that worries her, Kaplan smiles ruefully.

"It's what we old elections workers have always said: We don't care who wins as long as they win big."