October 28, 2004

View From The Sunshine State

Contributing Editor Peter Bearse reports from Florida:

Florida is having enough serious problems trying to implement the early voting feature enabled by changes in its election laws in response to the chaos of the 2000 election. I can't imagine them yet implementing e-voting even if it were enabled by law.

There are long lines and hours of waiting, day after day at every polling place, as hundreds of thousands of people try to vote early. There's also a deluge of absentee votes overwhelming county supervisors of elections and their workers. There are already -- pre-Nov.2nd! -- thousands of complaints about voting eligibility, voting procedures and actions at the polls, and several lawsuits have already been filed. The vitriol and lack of basic courtesy of some of the Democrats demonstrating near the polling stations, heard on the basis of second hand reports from Republican friends who have worked at the polls, is hard to believe.

It's also worth mentioning that Internet connectivity is important to those working at party / campaign headquarters for the sake of being able to do a number of things -- rapidly exchange information among local units, find out where there are shortages of volunteers and campaign materials and how to trade, loan, exchange or otherwise fill the gaps, provide rapid response to problems at polling places, etc.

Posted by Buzz Webster at October 28, 2004 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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