Local Elections Are Important Too

Because so much of our focus is on the “big dance” right now we have to sometimes remind ourselves there is a lot going on everyday that has nothing to do with who becomes President in November.

Florida held a Primary election yesterday. We needed to address positions like county commissioners, school board seats, judges, etc.

I got to my local polling place about 10AM and discovered I was only the 21st person to show up at that point. I don’t know how many people are registered to vote where I do but from past experience in working at a polling location I have to guess several hundred. Voter apathy is understandable when this is a Primary and in Florida cannot “cross over”. We must vote only for someone in our chosen party. Independents cannot vote at all.

What struck me, besides the low turnout on a beautiful morning, was being met by the same cheerful, smiling and loyal poll workers at my precinct that greet me every time I vote. The gentleman sitting outside making sure nobody harassed anyone coming to vote is the same person I have seen every time I have voted in this particular location, which is several years. I got my usual big smile and greeting. Was he friendly or just lonely? I will say he was genuinely friendly, and, devoted. The same goes for the 6 to 8 workers inside. The place was empty when I entered so we joked about who would get me into their line to sign the necessary log and show my identification, etc. I told a quick joke and we all enjoyed a laugh. This is a group of folks that do what they do because they believe in something. There is no joy in standing or sitting in a polling location anywhere and spending your day making sure voters are properly directed so they can vote.

This year we used a new system of voting so there was bound to be some confusion. Oh, did I say new? Sorry, we have used this system before, just not recently. After the hanging chad debacle a few years ago (punch cards), Florida spent millions of dollars buying touch screen computers. Well, when it was discovered they could be hacked and there was absolutely no record of any voted recorded anywhere, Florida junked them. So, yesterday I used an optical scanner. This is the third system of voting I have used the last three times I have voted.

BUT, today’s Tampa Tribune headline blared “Glitches Mar Debut Of New Voting System”. Oh, no – here we go again. Problems with the system in Hillsborough County where I live resulted in long delays for candidates and voters awaiting results. Our esteemed and controversial Elections Supervisor, Buddy Johnson, who is up for re-election himself in November first said the problem was not with the poll workers but with the equipment. His best quote of the evening was “This is simply the posting of results…this has nothing to do with tabulation….the votes were safe and secure”. Huh? Posting in Hillsborough County began at 9PM which was much later than other counties in our area. At one point during a news conference Johnson stormed out of the room refusing to answer reporters’ questions.

The conversion to touch-screen machines cost Hillsborough County about $6 million. They are gone. The older and more reliable technology used in optical scanners we used yesterday was supposed to make the voting process simpler for the voters and provide quick and accurate results.

Later in the evening Mr. Johnson returned to address reports again, with more memorable quotes, like “Absolutely no issue with the tabulation of votes….it’s just a matter of getting them to the screen for you”. Well, that makes me feel warm, fuzzy and much better. But a salesman for the new machines was quoted as saying “It was a database issue we had to resolve”. That seemed to fly in the face of what Mr. Election Supervisor Johnson said. The final coup de grace was this quote from Johnson. “The elections business is not perfect…a delay is not a mistake. A delay is a delay…it’s the last office in the United State of America that should be politicized…there were virtually no issues today”. Well, that makes me feel even better than his earlier statements – nothing is perfect and mistakes in the counting of the one thing we rely on more than anything else in a democracy is whether our vote is correctly counted or counted at all. The first part of his quote referred to criticism he was receiving all evening and the second part of his quote dodged the issue of paper jams, voters not receiving a tear off receipt (I did not even know there was one).

So, we return the abyss of the last eight years as Florida, the fourth largest State in this country (in population) cannot seem, in my county at least, to figure out how to count votes. I think back to those poll workers I met in the morning and picture them tearing out their hair. Who could blame them? This was a test run for what promises to be a highly contested and crucial vote in Florida this November. Our Primary was a test to determine if we were ready. The obvious answer is “hell no, here we go again”.