Just thought of the best way to steal an election.

Maybe it was last year that I got a call from an acquaintance who I hadn't heard from in a while. The calls were a game she use to play, and I went along with it because I had nothing to hide. In return for a casual chat up where I would tell her where I was in my writing of the history of a local dust up, she would tell me things that she had uncovered either in her job or from sitting on a local board. It wasn't private, confidential stuff, but more like Arsenio Hall's version of "things that make you go hmmmm," but through the eyes of a community activist. Yet, I wouldn't call her an activist. Just someone that enjoyed getting involved in her community.

Anyway, one of the last things she told me was that she had been tracking the sales of multi-family units in her area and had noticed there were slight variations between the names on the warranty deeds and the names on the county appraiser's records. Now, that's how I interpreted what she was telling me, because, honestly, I wasn't listening too hard. Though I enjoyed these conversations I always felt like they were potential distractions because they would sometimes sidetrack me from what I was doing. It had happened in the past where I got sucked into caring too much and I found myself in a room full of Republicans asking myself, which one doesn't belong?

Anyway, jump ahead a year. My friend dies suddenly. Quite shocking from CJD at the age of 52. Can't stop thinking about that. When she died the city lost its most committed advocate, because, she, unlike me, saw the good in the people in the city. I always felt that it became a deterrence to like them too much because it would hold a person back from exposing the wrong-doing that goes on around here, all the time.

Anyway, when a Central Florida paper recently reported that two Republican candidates had to write hasty checks to pay for back taxes on a homestead exemption "misunderstanding," I remembered the conversation I had with my friend and I thought, abuse of homestead exemptions is what my friend had been wondering about. Specifically: were people buying up units in the deflated townhouse market (she said they were going for less than $25,000), then, lo and behold, a misspelling on the property appraiser's office gave them an opportunity to file a homestead exemption so they don't even have to pay taxes on the property?

I know right? It sounds crazy. But I happen to know she had a better idea about these things than I do, so if it concerned her, there may have been some validity to it.

And then, this morning, it occurred to me, if they managed to file homestead exemptions for different units, couldn't they also set up false voter identities? If they could get away with misspellings on the name of the property owners, why not misspellings for SSN?

Yes, I know what you're thinking. Too crazy to happen. But could it be done without the top brass learning about it? Especially when all it would take was a "mistake" at the keyboard? Afterall, why should there be any misspellings at all? And it doesn't even have to be regular employees inputting the information, but some temp worker.

I wish I could remember the name of the person she had uncovered. This would be much easier to track. Anyone know how the system works to see if this were feasible?