More Broward ballots undeliverable than cast by mail

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-celect05nov05,0,2238918.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

More Broward ballots undeliverable than cast by mail

By Scott Wyman and Buddy Nevins
Staff writers
Posted November 5 2003

More ballots were returned as undeliverable than were cast in Tuesday's mail-in election -- the last major job for Broward County Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant before the governor decides whether to remove her.Oliphant was under intense pressure to pull off the small election in four cities without a hitch after a state task force last month charged her with gross dereliction of duty. They gave her a deadline of next Monday to make dramatic improvements to her operations.

But the problems with Tuesday's election have been building for months, because the office had not completed a state-mandated update of the voter registration roll. The out-of-date list contains thousands of voters who have moved or died. The U.S. Postal Service returned 17,245 of the 100,000 ballots sent out, because they went to people no longer at the addresses listed. At the same time, 14,752 residents of Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach, Southwest Ranches and two neighborhoods near Cooper City voted -- a turnout that was a fourth of what Oliphant had hoped for.

City officials were frustrated, and county leaders depicted the vote as another sign that Oliphant's tumultuous tenure must come to an end soon.

....snip