gopbi.com
[excerpt]
She said Robbins allowed the Republican officials to take the applications to Republican
headquarters, correct the numbers and return them.
Public-records law experts say Robbins should never have allowed the applications, which they
say were public records, to be removed from her office or be altered.
Smith said she did not keep track of the number of applications that were removed from her
office.
gopbi.com
State official backs Seminole
ballots
By Mary Ellen Klas and Scott Hiaasen, Palm Beach Post
Staff Writers
Thursday, November 30, 2000
TALLAHASSEE -- Republican Party officials who fixed
flawed request forms for hundreds of absentee ballots could
face prosecution, but that is no reason to throw those ballots
out, the state's election director said Wednesday.
"I'm not sure the supervisor should have allowed that,"
Division of Elections Director Clay Roberts said of the
Seminole County supervisor of elections, "but, from the
voters' standpoint, if they (the voters) did everything right,
they should not be disenfranchised."
Roberts is one of three members of the state canvassing
board that certified George W. Bush as Florida's winner
Sunday in the presidential election. The winner of Florida
would have enough electoral votes to be given the
presidency.
Three residents of Seminole County are alleging in Leon
County Circuit Court that the state election canvassing
commission and the Seminole County supervisor of
elections acted illegally when they agreed to let two local
Republicans use her office for 10 days to fill out incomplete
ballot request forms.
Kent Spriggs, attorney for the Seminole plaintiffs, said a handwriting analysis shows that at least
1,900 ballots were altered and should be thrown out -- a move that could hand the presidency
to Vice President Al Gore.
In Martin County, elections officials allowed local GOP officials to take the applications to the
local party headquarters to make the corrections.
A state law adopted two years ago to thwart voter fraud with absentee ballots required voters to
supply his or her name, address, voter registration number and the last four digits of the Social
Security number to obtain an absentee ballot by mail.
Under the law, only a voter, his legal guardian or a member of his immediate family could fill
out the request form.
Legislators wrote the law as a reaction to the fraud that stained the 1997 mayoral election in
Miami. There, absentee ballot fraud was so rampant (at least one dead person voted) that a
judge later threw out all the city's absentee ballots and declared a new winner.
The law also clarified that parties may send out self-printed mailers that invite voters to request
the local supervisor of elections to send them an absentee ballot.
To "make things as easy as possible" for voters, the party would include all the required
information except the Social Security numbers, Roberts said.
These forms brought constant criticism from supervisors of elections, Roberts said.
"They don't like the mailers that both parties send out, but they're lawful. They want me to ban
them, but I can't," he said, noting that was the legislature's job.
But like much of the murky law in Florida's election code, the law on which the absentee ballot
request forms are based has its own problems.
Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Justice Department must review every election law
passed in Florida to determine whether it violated any portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The law limited who could pick up ballots from voters and who could sign as witnesses to
absentee ballots. The law also gave political parties the authority to designate ballot
coordinators to witness an unlimited number of ballots.
The Justice Department rejected the ballot coordinator provisions and other portions of the law
in August 1998 and ruled that it was "legally unenforceable" because the new restrictions could
inhibit minority and elderly voters.
Those sections "are now moot," said Ed Kast, general counsel for the Division of Elections.
Practically, that means the secretary of state enforces only part of the statute, including the
section relating to the absentee ballot voter request forms, but doesn't enforce other sections.
The legislature had an opportunity to clear up the law with a bill filed by state Sen. Burt
Saunders, R-Naples, and Rep. Mark Flanagan, R-Bradenton, last session, but the bill died on
the final day of the session.
Meanwhile, the Florida Republican Party has taken full advantage of the opportunity to send
out absentee ballot requests.
One month after the Justice Department's ruling, Tom Slade, then-chairman of the state
Republican Party, asked for clarification from the Division of Elections about whether third
parties could deliver absentee ballot requests to voters.
The division ruled that political parties may send the forms to voters, but only the voter, his
legal guardian, or a member of his immediate family may request the form.
The Seminole lawsuit alleges that by accepting ballots that were obtained through request
forms that had been fraudulently altered, elections officials violated their own rules.
By allowing others to fill out voter identification codes, they committed fraud, a third-degree
felony. The case is scheduled to go to trial Wednesday.
Officials in Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties said they saw no problems with the absentee
request forms they received.
Judith Creswick, who handles absentee ballots for Palm Beach County, said no more than 30
requests out of 54,000 were not completely filled out. In those cases, the elections supervisor
sent postcards directly to voters asking them to call to complete the forms.
"We didn't have any of those kinds of problems," Creswick said.
Nor did it happen in Hillsborough County, where 47,000 voters received absentee ballots.
Elections supervisor Pam Iorio said her staff would fill in a missing voter registration number on
an application, but a missing Social Security number must be filled in only by the voter.
"We would not work through another party," she said.
The Republican Party in particular has been aggressive in encouraging voting by absentee
ballot.
In one mailing sent to Republicans "from the desk of Governor Jeb Bush," the party sent along a
card for voters to sign and send to their local election offices.
The letter, bearing the governor's signature, said absentee ballots let people "vote from the
comfort of your own home."
That mailing, which was eventually canceled, drew the ire of the state Democratic Party, which
sued because the letter also bore a likeness of the state seal. State law says the seal can't be
used for political purposes.
The suit was thrown out five days before Election Day by Tallahassee Judge Terry Lewis.
The lawyer representing Jeb Bush in that case was Barry Richard, now one of the chief attorneys
for George W. Bush. |
