Election 2004's Cruella De Vil - Glenda Hood (R) FL Sec of State.

Glenda Hood was appointed by Jeb Bush to finish Kat Harris's term.



Hood


Hood with Cheney



ACLU sues over late absentee ballots

By TIM REYNOLDS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


Palm Beach County Canvassing Board members, from foreground left, Theresa LePore, supervisor of elections; Judge Barry Cohen; and Karen Marcus, chair Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners; review absentee voter ballots as lawyers look on at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election office in West Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2004. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
MIAMI -- Absentee ballots mailed by Florida elections supervisors too late for possibly thousands of voters to return them on time should still count, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The suit, filed against Secretary of State Glenda Hood and elections supervisors in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, asks that completed absentee ballots mailed in the United States that arrive at county offices before Nov. 12 be counted. State law required those ballots to reach county offices by Tuesday night.

The Nov. 12 deadline would be the same standard applied to absentee ballots filed by voters who are out of the country.

"These are not people who filed their request for an absentee ballot late," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "These are people who filed it well in advance of the deadline and some of them just got their absentee ballot (Tuesday) - effectively preventing them from participating in today's election."

More:

Thanks to DUer Maple for the link: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apelection_story.asp?category=1131&slug=ELN%20Absentee%20Ballots

And there's more. It seems that when Hood was the Orlando Mayor, from what I can ascertain, she was involved in some shady business:

Glenda Hood wasn't the only one who needed a truth squad during the recent mayoral campaign. So many rumors, half-truths and cheap shots were uttered over issues ranging from taxes to racism to light rail that voters, much more than the candidates, needed a functioning BS meter.

Among the rumors was that two-time incumbent Glenda Hood had somehow arranged during the late 1980s for SunTrust Bank to forgive a loan owed by the Hood family business. The idea was that Hood had violated state conflict-of-interest laws by using her influence (not as mayor, but as a commissioner) in negotiations with the bank. Nobody has ever said what SunTrust received in return. There's only the notion that bank officials must have winked and nodded at Hood during council meetings when SunTrust had business with the city.

Rumors of the loan first surfaced from callers to AM radio host Doug Guetzloe's show. They might have stayed rumors except that Hood's challenger, Commissioner Bruce Gordy, in what might have been the defining moment of a nasty campaign, said he was taking the high road in not talking about "Guetzloe's allegation about SunTrust loans even though senior SunTrust officers have met with me at their request on this."

There's no use bashing Gordy's odd, self-contradictory nondenial denial, which cost him credibility and began a fight with the Orlando Sentinel over whether he actually spoke to bank officials. Hood's March 14 election victory was enough proof that Gordy should have handled the issue better.

With the election over, the issue for anyone with a curiosity in local politics is the story of the loan. It was never entirely clear whether Hood and her husband, Charlie, received favoritism from SunTrust. Was there a loan? Was it forgiven? Were ethics laws broken? And if so, can constituents do anything about it?

The answer is that, yes, the Hoods did borrow more than $4.42 million from SunBank, which changed its name to SunTrust in 1995. And there's strong evidence Hood Management Services, Charlie Hood's now-defunct company that secured the loans, could not pay back half of the money. But because of the way the state's ethics code is written, it doesn't appear that Glenda Hood violated conflict-of-interest laws -- either by voting on issues involving SunBank (or SunTrust) or by being an elected official whose husband's company had a debt forgiven by a bank that did business with the city.

More:

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?id=2410


And as mayor, she flip flopped on gay issues, moving from stating that gays should be a protected class to saying that she saw no need for such a law:

Moments before Orlando mayor Glenda Hood uttered the words that will surely define her as a person, if not as a politician, she grabbed her throat in what many would recognize as the universal choking sign.

The issue at hand on Oct. 21 was whether commissioners should vote to add gays and lesbians to the class of people protected against discrimination by the city's civil-rights ordinance. This is the same ordinance that protects people of age and of color from housing and employment discrimination.

Four commissioners -- Ernest Page, Patty Sheehan, Daisy Lynum and Phil Diamond -- said they favored scheduling a vote. Two commissioners -- Vicki Vargo and Betty Wyman -- wanted to duck the controversial move, saying they'd rather put the issue before voters via a referendum.

Then it was Hood's turn. Rubbing her throat, subconsciously touching the gold necklace that hung there, Hood said she respected the other commissioners. She hoped everyone would be respectful of one another. The issue at hand was difficult, emotional, controversial, divisive, and she had looked at it from a personal, legal and community perspective. Balancing all those perspectives was difficult, she said.

Then she spoke the words that finally let Hood out of the closet, enabling gays and lesbians to know how she really felt about an issue they worked on for more than two years: "I haven't seen a demonstrative need to change the law," the 52-year-old Hood said. "That's where I am."

Forgive gay activists if they mistakenly thought Hood was somewhere else entirely. They had a lot of reasons to believe she could put aside her tendency toward small-town values. After all, it was only two years ago the mayor had quietly slipped a policy change past the council adding sexual orientation to the protected class of employees at City Hall.
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"Eight months ago, Mayor Hood supported this," says Sam Odom.

More:

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?id=3691

DUers, know thy enemy. Florida isn't over, not by a long shot, even though the media have declared Bush the winner. Watch out for news about Hood. She will manipulate Florida to Bush's favor, just as Kat did in 2000