herald.com
11 counties changed rules to reinstate overseas
votes
BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI
aviglucci@herald.com
Under pressure from Republicans and the public to reconsider rejected overseas ballots, 11 Florida
canvassing boards set aside the rule book last weekend, reinstating scores of questionable votes
under makeshift standards that varied widely and in some instances may have broken the law.
In Santa Rosa, Duval and Escambia counties, it meant counting ballots postmarked after Election
Day. In Santa Rosa, it also meant counting five ballots that arrived after the 10-day post-election
window allowed by the state.
In Clay County, it meant allowing in three ballots without a witness signature and two votes that
arrived via fax.
In most cases, it meant that local elections officials counted overseas ballots bearing neither the
required postmark nor a date, a sharp departure from longstanding practice in many, if not most,
Florida counties.
In a push that ultimately increased George W. Bush's narrow lead in the state's presidential election
by 115 votes, GOP lawyers in effect managed to get the canvassing boards to do what they claim
Democrats did in demanding extensive hand recounts: Change the rules in the middle of the game.
``It changed from following strict adherence to statutory law to a more general interpretation based
on new information, basically,'' said Stephanie Thomas, assistant supervisor of elections in Clay
County, where the canvassing board on Friday reinstated 14 of 17 invalidated ballots, all but one of
those votes for Bush.
The 11 canvassing boards were among 14 sued by the GOP after they discarded scores of overseas
ballots -- many of which come from military personnel posted abroad -- because they failed to meet
legal and technical requirements long adhered to across the state.
ANTI-FRAUD RULES
Those rules are designed to prevent fraud. The state legislature tightened many of the requirements
after Miami's 1997 mayoral election, which was overturned in court because of widespread
absentee-ballot fraud.
The Republicans dropped their suit last week, on the eve of a judge's ruling, saying it had its desired
effect of forcing reconsideration of the disqualified ballots. The GOP lawyers then re-sued five
counties that balked and two of those then revisited the ballots.
Republican officials also prompted a public uproar by suggesting that Democratic monitors who
challenged many of the ballots when they were first counted on Nov. 17 had singled out military
voters for disqualification. The overseas ballots, some of which come from civilians abroad,
historically have favored Republicans.
Elections offices in those counties were barraged with angry letters, phone calls and e-mails
demanding reconsideration. Some said they were lobbied heavily by their local Republican elected
officials.
Hillsborough County elections supervisor Pam Iorio said she received ``hundreds'' of angry e-mails
that she believes were coordinated and also had ``people calling me at home and screaming at
me.''
``It's become an emotional issue tied up with this notion of disenfranchising individuals,'' said Iorio, a
Democrat whose board has declined to reconsider 75 rejected ballots. ``No supervisor wants to
disenfranchise voters. But the law is pretty clear and unambiguous.
``Unless a judge were to indicate that we've misread the law or there is some new interpretation,
there is no reason for the canvassing board to go back and look at this.''
Supervisors in several counties that reinstated overseas votes acknowledged in interviews that they
previously would not have counted the ballots, but they defended their change of heart as fair and
reasonable.
What changed?
Many cited the Florida Supreme Court's decision last week allowing manual recounts requested by
Democrats to proceed -- a ruling attacked by Republicans because they allege it rewrote the rules
after the vote.
The Supreme Court decision makes no reference to overseas ballots, but does cite a landmark 1975
state case in which the high court urged officials not to rely on ``hypertechnical'' requirements if they
would invalidate otherwise legitimate votes.
That led some elections officials for the first time to view some absentee rules, such as the postmark
requirement, as technicalities.
``The first time we counted, if it was not the way it was supposed to be, we said no,'' said Escambia
County Judge Thomas Johnson, chairman of the county canvassing board, which reinstated 55
votes, a net gain of 36 for Bush.
Most of those, Johnson said, had been rejected because they bore U.S. postmarks; the rules require a
foreign postmark. But if officials were able to verify the ballots were originally sent from overseas,
they were allowed in, said Johnson, a Republican. Among them were ``a couple'' bearing postmarks
after Election Day.
MOVE QUESTIONED
But in reinstating the ballots, one legal expert said, the canvassing boards made decisions that are
at best debatable, and in some cases possibly illegal.
A state rule in effect for 16 years seems to bar dropping the requirement for a postmark or a date,
said Terence Anderson, a specialist in election law at the University of Miami.
Republicans and some elections officials contended that the rule -- which requires either a postmark
or a date with the voter's signature -- unfairly penalizes armed services personnel whose mail
sometimes is not stamped or cancelled. They also note that ballot instructions do not ask voters to
date their signature, nor does the envelope contain a line or space for a date.
Some counties with heavy military votes, such as Brevard and Manatee, say they have ignored the
rule in the past. The rule is designed to ensure that no ballots cast after Election Day are counted, a
constitutional requirement.
Anderson said ignoring the postmark might make sense only if elections officials can ascertain that
the ballots were mailed on or before Election Day. ``Something from Arabia that is received on Nov.
10th was probably cast and mailed well before Nov. 7,'' he said.
But, he said, ``the rule is fairly specific. I think they're wrong.''
Other examples -- such as counting ballots bearing post-election postmarks -- are clear-cut, he said.
``That I think is flat-out illegal,'' Anderson said. ``That's a constitutional issue, and the Constitution is
not a hypertechnicality.''
Johnson, the Escambia judge, said: ``I don't disagree. I simply don't know. The canvassing boards
have had no guidance on this. It never came up before.''
ARBITRARY DECISIONS
One consequence of the improvised standards was that ballots ruled valid in one county would not
have passed muster in others.
Santa Rosa County, for instance, hewed to a rule that an overseas ballots is not counted unless there
is a request for it on file. But Pasco County did not. Its canvassing board reinstated 18 ballots, 12 of
them Bush votes, most originally rejected because no one had requested them, said Pasco elections
supervisor Kurt Browning.
``If the voter is registered, why not count that ballot?'' said Browning, a Democrat.
And while Browning and others adhered to the requirement that ballot envelopes bear the signature
of a witness across the seal, the rule was waived in the case of three ballots that didn't in Clay
County.
The county's canvassing board also accepted two faxed-in ballots, in spite of a requirement that they
arrive by mail.
In Santa Rosa, a Panhandle county with a heavy military population, officials said the canvassing
board reinstated not only ballots with no postmarks, but also two ballots postmarked Nov. 8, the day
after the election, and five ballots that arrived after the Nov. 17 deadline.
Elections officials defended those decisions, saying that in most cases they were able to verify that
ballots had come from Navy ships or other installations where mail can sit for several days before it is
postmarked and sent.
In other counties, though, officials drew the line at post-election postmarks.
``They're not counted,'' said Brevard County elections supervisor Fred Galey, ``because they're late.''
Several elections officials said they were troubled by the inconsistent decisions.
``That does bother me a great deal,'' said Johnson, the Escambia judge. ``I hope that out of all this
we get some administrative rules that tell the canvassing boards what to do.'' |
