Palm Beach County now has found too many ballots...instead of missing 3500.

This is really scary stuff in the same county that gave us the butterfly ballots and George W. Bush.

They now have the optical scan machines, and at first they tried to blame it on them. But no one really seemed to fall for it.

First they were missing 3500, then they found about a 1000. Now they found more than they were supposed to have.

In Palm Beach County it goes from missing ballots to too many ballots

There is a video there as well.



This is very bad, as there is a local judge's election which is separated by less than 100 votes.

Confusion and incompetence in Palm Beach County...who's got the ballots?



Now we are down to 249 more ballots than we should have. Bad situation.

One Palm Beach reporter theorizes that there is a common thread that links the two elections supervisors, LePore and Anderson.

The flaw that links LePore, Anderson



To top things off here, the icing on the cake....there is still no way to get a manual recount in close elections

Florida provides that the Governor and two members of the Cabinet selected by the Governor shall be on the Florida Canvassing Commission.

This is not appropriate. One member of the Canvassing Commission should not be appointed by the Governor and should be a member of the opposing party.


Florida provides that the supervisor of elections; a county court judge, who shall act as chair; and the chair of the board of county commissioners shall be on the county canvassing board.

That is not appropriate. Again, at least one member of the board should be of the opposing party.

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Indiana gets this right mostly.

Indiana requires that the County Clerk (an elected official) is automatically a member of the County Election Board. The Democratic and Republican Party each appoint a member to the board.

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Without both parties represented on election boards it restricts access and accountability.

How about Cuba? Would Cuba like Florida? The Floridians would get healthcare.

:evilgrin:

This does not instill confidence in our systems. :grr:

You know, in response to massive demonstrations by Democrats demanding an actual recount process. Or is that out of the question?

Also, what are the chances that this type of vote-counting "anomaly" is going to have a negative effect on Obama's vote totals in Florida?

Kurt Browning seems alarmed by it. But set me straight here...wasn't it part of the election bill in which the early primary bill was included? I am trying to find that out.

I heard there were some very bad things in that bill, not just the early primary. Trouble is the vote for it was almost 100%.

There was a post by the Sierra Club (?) I think that told the bad stuff in part.

Do you know if it was part of that bill?

http://news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080912/NEWS0107/809120362

"Advocacy groups predicted this week that thousands, mostly the poor and minorities, will be denied the right to vote through no fault of their own under a new Florida voter registration law.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning, Florida's top elections official, disputed the claims, contending recent changes in the law and procedures make it "much more voter-friendly."

The state's "no-match, no-vote" law requires elections officials to verify applicants' driver license numbers, state identification card or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers by using government databases.

Lee County Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington said the new law will allow more residents the right to vote. Under previous laws, if a voter's information couldn't be verified through state databases, the voter would be considered unregistered.

But under the new law, she said, if there's no local match, the information will be sent to a state database. If an error is spotted under the person's identification, it will be changed and cleared. If there's still no match, the person will get a letter and will have until the election to fix the information. If there's still a problem on Election Day, they will get a provisional ballot and will have two days after the election to fix the problem."

asked to read a book written in Chinese. The voter registrar almost fell out of his chair when the man said "yes, I can read that."

"It says No black people are going to be voting in Florida (Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, blah blah) this year."

Much More Voter-Friendly. Absolutely disgusting.

Sounds like it's going to take a massive voter RE-REGISTRATION drive to fix that problem. Then, of course, there will be delays due to computer malfunctions, overwhelming numbers of new voters registering, etc. etc.

I just wonder if the Obama organizers in the poor and minority communities could just begin to focus exclusively on this. Or am I being naive?

The joke made me laugh. But the rest is sad.

I hope someone is working on this, but the FL GOP is not known for being very cooperative.

I feel though that Obama will have to bypass many of the FL party leaders and do a lot through his campaign.

why they can't count? I received a fantastic education in Florida's public schools (at least in Math and Science). How hard is it to go one, two, three.....

:bounce:

Let's face it, counting votes in a fair sized county is hard when you have to take your shoes off to count past ten.

These folks make Jethro Bodine look like a brain surgeon.

prosecuting and put an end to all this? Our democracy has been breached.

with arbitrary, plenipotentiary powers, to set up a whole "turnkey" election system for you, and to supervise its conduct, from start to finish, nation-wide. Trouble is, after all the harm the wrong wing has done to you, I fear you'd choose a Communist government. Not that it wouldn't be an improvement!

this type of problem to flourish.

Everybody wants to hold on to their power in their jurisdiction so we can't get our National Government to set up and finance a national election system that might eliminate a lot of this local control and cronyism.

On the other hand, it might be just as bad, considering what happened with the U.S. Attorneys under Gonzales and Mukasey.

it's going to be a long, hard, vicious battle to reform our election processes in the U.S.

Wasn't it Jimmy Carter who said that our system miserably fails the test of election fairness that we impose upon other nations all over the world.

edited for clarity. I hope.

by nature, like all politicos. They're prone to have their hand in the till in various development schemes, so you don't want those tills to get too big.

The main purpose of our successive, wrong-wing Governments in decentralising taxation (flat taxes) and government in the UK, is to prevent the residents in richer areas being required to subsidise the public facilities in poorer areas. It has affected even the National Health Service in the UK - to the extent of the phrase "post-code lottery" being coined. Sometimes, it can mean a matter of life and death.

to fuck us over once again.

this is not surprising. This issue is one that enrages me!!! I fear that this type of shit will hand the presidency over to the crypt-keeper...same as what happened in 2000. We haven't changed at all...and so many Floridians don't even know that this is going on (or they simply don't care). It is truly disheartening. If the McSame gets in, this country is going to hell in a handbasket! How many stolen elections will we have to suffer through before people start to wake up? As a Floridian...I'm embarrassed and worried that we will be seeing more parallels to 2000. :(

that worked the Enron deal? Ever check out their Wikipedia entry? Unfuckingbelievable that that firm would be hired to audit an election of all things.

The shit never stops, never, ever.