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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (4443)	2/7/2001 9:37:10 PM
From: Carolyn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Of course no one mentions Chicago! [edit: grub!!!]

To: sandintoes who wrote (4443)	2/7/2001 9:37:47 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 59480

>>Area asks, `What went wrong?' Black precinct in Gulf County theorizes about botched ballots BRAD BENNETT bbennett@herald.com PORT ST. JOE, Fla. -- Like most voters in his predominantly black neighborhood, Early Lewis went to the polls on Nov. 7 to cast a vote for Al Gore. He has no idea whether that vote was tallied. A high number of ballots cast at his polling place were not. ``I would have never believed that,'' said Lewis, 57, when told by a Herald reporter that one of every five ballots in his precinct did not count, either because the ballot showed no mark for president or multiple marks for multiple candidates. ``Something really went wrong in this election for Gulf County,'' said Amy Shackleford, president of the Gulf County NAACP. Although far from the recount battlegrounds of Palm Beach County, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., Precinct 8 was similar to other polling places that saw large numbers of ballots discarded. It is overwhelmingly black -- 88 percent -- and a pro-Gore beachhead in a county that went solidly for George W. Bush. Of the 470 votes tallied in this polling place, which recently relocated to a sheriff's office after a violent storm tore the roof off the firehouse, Gore got nine of every 10. But fully 93 other ballots went uncounted, elections officials said, because voters chose more than one presidential candidate. Eight others were tossed out because the voter did not express a presidential preference. That one-in-five spoilage rate far exceeded any precinct in Palm Beach County, the site of widespread protests, civil rights lawsuits and demands for a revote. Residents of this town of 4,000, carved out of the seemingly endless evergreen forest of the Florida Panhandle, saw none of that, unless they turned on CNN. PLANT CLOSED Port St. Joe has been hurting since the St. Joe Paper Co. closed its local plant two years ago, laying off 550 workers. Many tourists pay it scant heed as they zoom through on their way to the sunny beaches of Panama City or the quaint charm of Apalachicola. It is bisected by railroad tracks, with blacks historically residing on one side and whites on the other in larger, colonial houses. When the paper plant shut down, many blacks were left jobless, including Lewis. Many had to settle for housekeeping, janitorial and groundskeeping work on the more prosperous white side of town. As with a lot of small towns far from urban centers, young people tend to leave Port St. Joe when they come of age. Older people and those with few options tend to stay put. Some have theorized that aging eyes and a lack of education had a lot to do with the high number of spoiled ballots. NO CONSPIRACY Although many here can remember the day when blacks were deliberately disenfranchised in the South through poll taxes and literacy tests, no one has evidence of a conspiracy to deprive people of votes. Nor is ``chad buildup'' or ``dimpled'' punch cards a factor. They don't use punch cards. Voters in Gulf County mark their preference with a pencil on paper ballots, which are then run through an electronic scanner. Shackleford said names were tightly spaced on the paper ballot, with multiple races squeezed onto every page. Phillip King, a barber shop operator who keeps up with the buzz in the community, was one of several people who complained to Shackleford that the ballot design was too congested. Sally Jenkins, a member of Gulf County's Democratic Committee who drove voters to the polls and, when asked, accompanied them into the booth, said she told voters to ask poll workers if they needed assistance, but that some have too much pride. ``They don't want you to know that they don't really understand,'' she said. UNIFORM SYSTEM If nothing else, the situation in Gulf County might give added impetus to a growing movement toward a uniform, modernized voting system throughout Florida. Until a solution is found and new machinery comes into widespread use, many blacks in Port St. Joe will remain a little bit wary of the American way of running an election. ``I didn't know that,'' said Dollie Keyes, a rehabilitation counselor who lives off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, when informed that her precinct had the most uncounted ballots in Gulf County. ``But I'm not that surprised.''<< miamiherald.com