Human (Or Was It Machine?) Errors Mar September 2002 Florida Primary Results
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Abstracts from Florida Democratic Party news release
Final voting results expected one week after electronic election
Does Florida's latest election fiasco portend another Bush theft in November?
Polling problems seen as 'crisis'
Serious unresolved issues with Miami-Dade primary election mar prospects for clean November 5, 2002 election
Contact: Ryan Banfill (850) 222-3411
September 11, 2002 — Florida Democratic Party Chair Bob Poe [decried] Gov. Jeb Bush's attempt to blame others for the problems across Florida during the September 10 primary election...
Poe noted that, instead of using the power of the Secretary of State's office to make sure the 2002 primary was error-free, Katherine Harris used her office to run for Congress and Jeb Bush was content with "photo-op election reform" instead of delivering meaningful election reform legislation that would prevent election problems in Florida. In a primary where Democrats, Republicans and Independents participated, Bush attempted to blame the problems on Democratic voters when he said, "What is it with Democrats having a hard time voting? I don't know." Poe noted that this wasn't a partisan problem, it was a Florida problem and Bush's wildly touted election reform solution was a dismal failure in heading off election troubles in counties across the state including:
Ballot jams occurred in optical scanners after ballots were read. Some voting machines were delivered to the wrong polling places. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
Dozens of poll workers didn't show up. In at least six cities, polls opened late. Elderly voters waited more than three hours to vote in suburban Miramar. A Hollywood Democrat left without voting after a two-hour wait when new touchscreen machines weren't running. Less than a full complement of machines was working in many precincts. An observer from the U.S. Justice Department took names of people who left one precinct without voting. Democrats received Republican ballots, with no primary in the governor's race. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
A precinct at a senior center near downtown Jacksonville opened 90 minutes late because poll workers didn't realize they were supposed to turn on machines themselves. Dozens of voters left without casting ballots. For the first 25 minutes, voters in a precinct in a predominantly black Jacksonville neighborhood distributed Democratic primary ballots to all voters for the first 25 minutes. At least one Republican left without voting. U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown tried to call the elections office to report problems but couldn't get through. Ballots jammed in optical-scanning machines due to rough tears at perforated lines. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
People assigned to new precincts in redistricting went to their old ones. People who moved went to the wrong precincts. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
Elections supervisor Pam Iorio called Gov. Bush's decision to extend voting for an extra two hours "a big mistake" because she had no uniform way to contact all 353 precincts to notify them of the decision. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
More than 500 voters were turned away before machines were activated nearly five hours late in a precinct in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood. The precinct shut down later and was closed in late afternoon. At 2 p.m. some machines were inoperable at 36 precincts. Machines malfunctioned in another Liberty City precinct by resetting themselves, routing voters back to the starting screen. Vote machines were activated late in precincts across the county ranging from affluent to poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
Republican voters, including many Air Force retirees, were upset by redistricting when they realized they had been moved from a contested congressional district to one with no race. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
At more than 100 precincts in the Orlando area, election workers used scissors to cut across flawed ballots before handing them to voters to enable electronic ballot readers to properly record votes. Boxes of ballots that had not been cut before workers noticed the problem had to be read by hand. (NY Times, Sept. 11, 2002)
Some voters left without casting ballots when new ATM-style voting machines couldn't be activated. Some poll workers didn't show up. About 115 poll workers quit Sunday. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
Precinct opened a half-hour late when a custodian arrived late to unlock the building. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
Elections officials ran out of ballots for the new optical scanning machines. Some people left without voting, election officials said. (NY Times, Sept. 11, 2002)
Union County workers were forced to count 2,600 ballots by hand because a programming error registered all Democratic votes as Republican. (St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 11, 2002)
A redrawn precinct forced some rural residents near Deltona to vote more than 20 miles from home. Two Oak Hill district races were incorrectly numbered on sample ballots published in newspapers and online. (AP, Sept. 10, 2002)
© 2002 by Joe Mozingo and Matthew I. Pinzur, The Miami Herald
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
Tuesday, September 17, 2002 — A week after Election Day, Miami-Dade County officials say they are confident every vote cast will be counted and reported by today's 5 PM deadline for state certification.
Broward elections officials wrapped up their count Monday and plan to present final results today to Tallahassee. However, they refused to comment about any detail of their process to recover votes.
Miami-Dade officials say their method of checking the count was almost foolproof.
"We have done everything within our power to make sure every vote has been counted in this election," assistant elections supervisor Gisela Salas said.
"Given what we saw Tuesday, I don't think we'll ever be confident that every vote was counted," said Nicole Harburger, spokeswoman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno. Her campaign indicated Reno will likely concede defeat today to Bill McBride in the primary if she doesn't get enough votes to overtake his lead.
"It is also evident that since then, [Election Supervisor David] Leahy has made a good faith effort to see that the votes are counted in Miami-Dade," Harburger added.
The day after the election, Miami-Dade officials determined the problem in getting an accurate vote count was caused almost exclusively by poll workers failing to close down the machines properly last Tuesday night — preventing their votes from being counted.
To close down a machine, a poll worker must insert a device called a master activator and collect all the votes. The process must be repeated in all the machines.
Aside from collecting votes, these activators store information about which machines were properly turned on and closed down. By running every activator through a computerized reader, Miami-Dade officials were able to get a precise list of machines that had not been closed down.
By the middle of last week, they had identified 265 machines in which they needed to "reharvest" the votes. To do so, they simply had to insert the activator into the machines, as should have been done on election night.
They began the process immediately, hunkering down in a dimly lit warehouse in Medley. But many machines were still at the polling stations. Locating and delivering the machines became the most time-consuming part of the vote recovery effort for workers from the county and Elections Systems & Software, the company that manufactured the iVotronic touch-screen machines.
The units did not contain serial numbers on their outer cases, so workers had to open them up, write the serial number down on a piece of masking tape and affix it to the outside.
By Monday night, Salas said activators — like computer disks — had been inserted into most of the suspect units and the votes were being recovered without a hitch. However, the department still had machines arriving from some polling places.
The results will be released after the county canvassing board certifies the election, Salas said.
In Broward, election officials wrapped up as well, estimating they had recovered roughly 1,000 untallied votes in their "reconciliation" of Tuesday's vote. They would not reveal results of the new tally.
Election workers operated in secrecy over the weekend. Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant was not present for the count and refused to speak publicly.
No information came until Monday, when frustrated members of Broward's canvassing board demanded a response from Oliphant's office.
According to them, election workers were analyzing voting printouts from each precinct. They used that information to help determine which machines to check.
In many cases, election officials found that poll workers had used the wrong activator — there were more than one at every precinct — to collect the votes, which meant they went unrecorded.
They flagged a total of 154 questionable precincts, said Diana Wasserman-Rubin, one of three people on the canvassing board that oversees Broward elections.
Machines from 15 precincts were unavailable until Monday afternoon because they were locked up in schools and other polling places over the weekend.
Administrative Judge Jay Spechler, who heads the canvassing board, demanded Monday in a letter that Oliphant's office answer in writing by 2 PM today exactly what transpired over the weekend and how the additional votes were tallied.
"That would give us, the canvassing board, the level of comfort we need to go forward," Wasserman-Rubin said.
Broward's review began last week when Reno's campaign pointed out 247 questionable precincts.
Miami-Dade's started on election night when officials noticed abnormally low results at some polling sites, such as Precinct 254 in Liberty City, which showed only 89 votes cast among 1,630 registered voters.
By the next day, they identified about 60 precincts that showed voter turnout of less than 10 percent.
In a few cases, the turnout was inordinately high, but that was resolved when officials determined election workers had accidentally combined the results of two precincts that shared the same polling station.
Leahy, the supervisor of elections, ordered staff to begin checking machines from the 60 precincts. They soon realized that all of the problems were caused by them not being closed down properly. That discovery allowed Leahy to change his game plan and check all the activators.
By the end of the week, he was able to focus on specific machines because the reader device would show which machines, listed by their serial numbers, were not closed down on Election Day.
Aside from the ones they had already reharvested Wednesday, there were 265 machines on that list. Whether these machines were in any or all of the 88 Miami-Dade precincts that Reno's campaign questioned is unclear.
So far, election officials have not analyzed which of the machines on their printouts match to which precincts.
"It's more important that we make sure to count every vote before our deadline," Salas said.
Monday morning, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas visited the Medley warehouse to see how the counting was going. He promised that officials' jobs would depend on the outcome of the next election.
"If elections don't go off the way they should in November, a lot of heads will roll," he said.
He declined to specify whose jobs were most in jeopardy, but Salas said it would likely include herself and Leahy.
Still, Penelas insisted he was taking responsibility for problems that left votes uncounted.
"I didn't come here to give any excuses," he said. "I took responsibility from day one, and I'm not passing the buck to anybody."
The mayor said he expects the county's inspector general to present a report on last week's chaotic balloting on Friday. Almost two dozen investigators are looking into it.
"Our main objective is to develop recommendations that are practical and can ensure the next election will be problem free," Inspector General Chris Mazzella said.
Given the short time-frame, he said they are just trying to find remedies rather than to point fingers.
In Tallahassee, Gov. Jeb Bush was quicker to assign blame.
"At the end of the day this is about human error and negligence by an elected supervisor and an appointed supervisor of elections...that were responsible to make sure that there was the proper work done," he said. "If those machines were so bad, why did it work so well in other counties?"
Herald staff writers Erika Bolstad, Hector Florin and Luisa Yanez contributed to this report.
© 2002 by Joe Follick, Tampa Tribune
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
September 17, 2002, Tallahassee — With Election Systems and Software's voting machines at the center of confusion in South Florida last week, critics are again scrutinizing the company's use of well-connected lobbyists and an unusual "kickback" deal to woo counties to buy its touch-screen equipment.
Experts warned last year that the Nebraska-based company's machines were untested and ill-suited for use in metropolitan counties.
Hillsborough County's top elections official refused to consider the machines.
Still, ES&S persuaded 32 of Florida's 67 counties to pay the company $67 million in taxpayers' money to replace voting equipment as part of the state's election reform plan.
But Governor Jeb Bush joined other officials in blaming a lack of preparation, not the machines, for the problems in the state's two largest counties: Miami-Dade and Broward.
Although ES&S machines worked well in most counties, poll-workers there were befuddled by the machines' high-tech needs and misplaced cartridges containing records of voter's ballots.
"At the end of the day, this is about human error and negligence," Bush said Monday.
But Ben Graber, a Democratic Broward County commissioner, said he'll try to throw ES&S machines out if the problems recur in November's general election.
"If they have another problem," he said, "we're going to say, 'Give us our $17 million back.'"
In 2001, after lawmakers required most counties to replace old equipment, voting machine companies ferociously lobbied for part of the multimillion-dollar pie.
Few lobbyists were as well- positioned to help ES&S as Sandra Mortham. A former Pinellas County legislator and Bush's original choice as running mate in 1998, Mortham also oversaw the Division of Elections as Florida secretary of state six years ago.
ES&S ' hiring of Mortham led other companies and elected officials to grouse privately that the company had an unfair advantage in getting its machines certified for use by the state.
"[ES&S] won big on that one," Graber said of Mortham's influence. Mortham didn't return a call requesting comment Monday.
"When you engage a lobbyist, you do it with the intention that they're going to help you," said ES&S Vice President Michael Limas. "We think Sandy did a good job for us."
Mortham was also a lobbyist for the Florida Association of Counties last year when an unusual "rebate" arrangement drew criticism from election officials
The deal gave the Florida Association of Counties a cut of ES&S sales. Critics said the plan gave county commissioners with little knowledge of voting machines a reason to choose ES&S without fully considering their quality.
"The county commissions had a financial inducement to go in a different direction [from election supervisors]," said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.
Sancho said the plan sounded like a kickback, and joined other supervisors in criticizing the deal.
County association Executive Director Mary Kay Cariseo said Monday that the group was trying to recover some taxpayers' money for the counties' use. She said the association expected to make $250,000 from the deal.
Beyond seamy political accusations were more tangible problems: Prior to last week's primary vote, ES&S machines had never been used in metropolitan cities.
Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio cited that reason when she refused to let ES&S bid for the county's contract.
Iorio picked machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems. Each cost about $3,150, compared with $3,000 for each ES&S machine.
But Iorio said using the ES&S machines would have required finding 700 more poll- workers since the machines need to be reset for each voter.
In Broward County, Elections Supervisor Miriam Oliphant suggested the county choose Sequoia, but the county commission chose ES&S.
When ES&S demonstrated its machines in Broward County, equipment was missing and video displays were small and sticky, Graber said.
"We bought it on good faith that they would fix those problems," Graber said.
Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom said the demonstration went well and the machines were not the problem last week.
His wife's voting experience, however, didn't go well.
"She kept pressing [Democratic governor candidate Bill] McBride, and it kept showing she voted for Daryl Jones," Rodstrom said. "Finally, the fourth time, it took."
Reporters Mike Salinero, William March and David Wasson contributed to this report. Reporter Joe Follick can be reached at (850) 222-8382.
©2002 by Bev Conover, Online Journal Editor & Publisher, Online Journal
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
September 19, 2002 — Imagine, people expect that the votes they cast in any election be counted. How novel. How quaint.
That is the attitude that has been displayed for the past week by Florida's corporate media, Governor Jeb Bush and his new secretary of state, Jim Smith, who replaces the infamous Katherine Harris. Never mind that Jeb, Harris and their Republican cohorts in the state legislature engineered the latest election debacle — all in the name of reform, of course, in the wake of the 2000 presidential election theft.
To the Florida media, Democrat Janet Reno is the pariah for seeking to have all the votes cast in the September 10 Democratic gubernatorial primary counted. Her major opponent, millionaire lawyer Bill McBride, could have gained a lot of points with voters if he had stood up with Reno, as Daryl Jones did, in fighting for the disenfranchised, but apparently winning at all costs is more important to McBride, who now goes on to face Jeb in November.
Despite all the primary day horrors, Jeb's newest lapdog, Smith not only rejected Reno's request for a statewide recount, but tried to blame all the problems on the county elections supervisors, going so far to say, "I frankly wonder what in the hell they have been doing for two years...Sixty-five counties have gotten it right-not perfect, but gotten it right."
Someone should clue Smith that the counties had but a few months to educate and familiarize themselves and voters with the new equipment — touch screens or optical scanners — that replaced the punch card systems. And in two earlier local elections in South Florida, the counties knew they had a disaster in the making with their wonderful new touch screens.
While it appears the biggest problems on September 10 were in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, it is a flat out lie to say that the other 65 counties got it right. Polls in many precincts failed to open on time because workers were late, failed to show up or didn't know how to turn on the equipment, leading Bush to extend voting by two hours statewide. Poll workers in numerous precincts ignored Jeb's executive order extending polling to 9 p.m. and shut their doors in the faces of people waiting to vote at 7 PM. Due to redistricting, there were foul-ups in the registration books and people were given incorrect or inadequate information about the location of their voting precincts. Various precincts experienced problems when workers improperly turned off machines before transmitting their tallies.
• In counties using the optical scan system, all votes in Union were tabulated as having been cast for Republicans, the ballots jammed in scanners in Duval and were shredded by the scanners in Orange.
• Data transmission problems plagued Collier County's new $4.3 million touch screen system, producing such results as more than 66,000 votes for a county commission candidate when only 39,369 voters went to the polls countywide.
• Glitches with improper or inadequate power supplies to run the touch screens in a number of Miami-Dade precincts caused voting to be halted when the backup batteries were drained — voting was suspended from 11 AM to 4:30 PM at the Crowder Elementary School until a technician arrived to revive the system, causing hundreds of voters, who may not have returned later, to be turned away.
And these are just the problems we know about. In addition, it has been reported that in Miami-Dade some poll workers could not read English and some could not read at all.
But did any of this bother the corporate media in Florida or elsewhere? No. It was all let's get on with the horse race and Janet is a bad girl for wanting all the votes counted, even though Jeb and Smith made her settle for whatever of the tally that could be straightened out between September 12 and September 17 at 5 PM.
The Gainesville Sun, another New York Times owned disgrace, gleefully reported Saturday, under the headline, Reno Down for the Final Count, that Smith had rejected her request for a statewide recount.
The six-tenths of 1 percent that separated her from McBride on September 10 was one-tenth of 1 percent short of triggering an automatic statewide recount, and the trigger for that automatic recount vaporized at 5 PM on September 12. The "final" count narrowed McBride's lead over Reno to about 4,800 votes from the 8,196 lead he originally had. Had it not been for the time limitation imposed that would have triggered the automatic statewide recount.
Caught between her desire to have all the votes counted and not spoiling it for McBride and the Democrats in November, Reno early on let it be known that she would not mount a court challenge. But that won her no points with Florida's corporate media, either. One local TV "newscaster" last night spat, "Well, it's finally over."
Jeb, who hastily thrust this mess on the counties — gave them $32 million of taxpayer money that had to be matched by the counties with millions more — and who took full credit for the legislation that led to another fiasco that disenfranchised thousands of voters, had the gall to say, "What is it with Democrats having a hard time voting?"
Since a lot of the mess in Miami-Dade and Broward involved heavily black districts (sound familiar?), perhaps African Americans should consider that Republicans may be telling them to return to the back of the bus.
As for Harris, who along with Jeb and his treasonous brother, George W., should be looking at long stays as "enemy combatants" in a Guantanamo Bay dog cage, is instead most likely on her way to a seat in Congress, having "won" her GOP primary race by a margin of 68 percent over her opponent, former TV news anchor John Hill.
McBride could have pulled a coup of his own had he named Reno as his running mate. Instead he has pulled another Democrat out of the state Senate by choosing the little known Tom Rossin, a 69-year old retired banker from Palm Beach County. Might McBride have enough sense, should he beat Bush in November, to name Reno as secretary of state, if she would accept, so the Florida voting mess is finally straightened out?
The question is can McBride beat Bush, since the Florida corporate media has contended for months that Jeb, whom they have dubbed "popular," is unbeatable and in light of all the dirty tricks the Republicans have already pulled?
Given the debacle of this primary election, one wit wrote that "you can hear the Republicans smiling all the way from Tallahassee."
Then there is Jeb's smug pronouncement, "I don't know exactly what the powers I have to do this, but I guarantee you that in November, the election will run much more smoothly than the supervisors of election allowed to occur [Tuesday]."
Is this Bush/Republican speak for they already have November's votes counted?
by John Lantigua, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
© 2002 Palm Beach Post
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
Saturday, September 21, 2002, Miami — The Miami-Dade County inspector general Friday delivered a stinging report on polling problems in the September 10 primary, accusing officials of ignoring the county's own auditors, who as early as 15 months ago warned of looming chaos.
To prevent a repeat of the meltdown, emergency operations officials, those who prepare the county for crises such as hurricanes, will be assigned to oversee polling in Miami-Dade during the November 5 general election. The report recommended the move, and County Mayor Alex Penelas and Manager Steve Shiver immediately agreed.
"The inspector general says that we need to treat the November 5 election as a crisis," Penelas told reporters. "I want to embrace that recommendation. There is absolutely no room for error November 5."
In his report, which was requested September 11 by the mayor and the county commission, Inspector General Christopher Mazzella, wrote, "I absolutely believe that the identified irregularities that did arise in the past election are not only inexcusable but were preventable."
He said his staff had found that as early as June 13, 2001, the county's Audit and Management Services Department pointed to specific deficiencies in poll-worker training that had become evident in the error-plagued November 2000 polling.
Despite that warning, "county officials failed to take adequate measures to correct those shortcomings," Mazzella's report said.
In fact, AMS recommended in its June 2001 memo that the county appoint its own employees to oversee polling and to direct the work of civilian poll workers.
Elections Supervisor David Leahy rejected that plan at the time, although he recently announced he would do exactly that on November 5.
"It is apparent, especially with the hindsight provided by last week's debacle, that AMS was right," Mazzella's report said in boldfaced type.
Dozens of polling places opened late on September 10 and many machines were not operable, causing would-be voters to walk away from their precincts in frustration.
The inspector general's report also uncovered other malfunctions that occurred before and during the primary balloting, some of them previously unreported. A number of them involved Elections Systems and Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb., which supplied the county's new touch-screen voting machines and software for $24.5 million.
The report revealed that ES&S had promised to deliver by May 2002 a trilingual electric ballot — in English, Spanish and Creole.
But the work was completed late and the ballot featured a two-column design frighteningly reminiscent of Palm Beach County's butterfly ballot, which caused havoc in the November 2000 presidential election.
Leahy rejected it and didn't receive a new ballot design until August 21, less than three weeks before the primary, and only after elections department trainers had finished their study of the new touch-screen system.
"Trainers were unable to train using the actual ballots," Mazzella's report stated. "Additionally, by not having the final 'certified' ballot design until late August, the elections department was unable to develop the voter education video that was planned to be aired on television."
The report also noted that it was the late development of the trilingual ballot that lengthened the time necessary to download software into each voting machine — from 1 minute to 6 1/2 minutes. That led to the late openings of many precincts.
"These eleventh-hour undertakings exacted a high toll on the ability of staff to carry out its functions without mistakes," the report said. "ES&S bears major responsibility for these significant shortcomings."
The report stated that investigators are looking into the possibility that ES&S violated its contractual obligations to the county.
Mazzella also said that his office will investigate the procurement process in which ES&S beat out two other companies, including Sequoia of California, which supplied new touch-screen machines to Palm Beach County, where there were relatively few problems. ES&S also sold its machines to Broward County, which had problems similar to those in Miami-Dade.
Leahy, who many political observers think could be dismissed after the November election, was lambasted in the report for the lack of training afforded poll workers. The inspector general also criticized Leahy for the lack of standards employed in choosing the people who trained poll workers.
"The job qualifications for these trainers did not require that the trainers had ever actually trained anyone," the report said.
Leahy has now promised that each voting machine will have boot-up instructions on the machine in time for the November 5 election. He has laid out some other reforms he is planning, but Mazzella's report cautioned against too much change.
"Given the chaos in the morning hours of September 10th, changing the procedures again could easily create another state of confusion," the inspector general warned.
Mazzella's report recommended a clearer chain of command at polling places, better training for precinct workers and mandatory demonstration of the voting machines to all people arriving to vote.
It also suggested the county attorney's office cooperate to mediate questions about eligibility, registration and access to provisional ballots on Election Day.
As for the use of the emergency operations workers — including top police and fire officials who are considered the county's premier crisis planners — Penelas said: "We need to treat this like we would treat a hurricane or the Super Bowl...The issue isn't whether it looks pretty..."
"If we need to be in the Emergency Operations Center November 5, we'll be there."
© 1997-2002, Judicial Watch, Inc.
Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.
Thursday, October 24, 2002, Miami, Florida —Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced the preliminary findings of its inspection of public records and ballots, as well as extensive interviews with Miami-Dade election officials regarding the controversial September 10, 2002 primary election.
• Precincts where upwards of 150 votes were counted that lacked signatures in the precinct registers. These are "ghost" votes, without the signatures of registered voters to back them up or provide any means of auditing an accurate tally of total votes cast. In one local race the number of votes cast without any verified signature in the register amounts to 25% of the total votes. Miami-Dade County Election Supervisor David Leahy told Judicial Watch investigators that he was aware of the problem but had no idea of its scope. He also said that he and his staff "did not have time" to review the problem, but that they would investigate it after the November 5 election.
• Negligent precinct clerks and poll workers who failed miserably in performing their sworn duty during the September 10 primary will be used again for the November 5 general election. The failures of these public officials who take an oath, reportedly range from outright dereliction of duty and negligence to carelessness by not reporting data and votes at certain precincts. Mr. Leahy told Judicial Watch investigators that he and his staff know who these precinct clerks and poll workers are and to what degree they failed to uphold their sworn oaths as public officials, yet he has decided that these same compromised clerks and poll workers will run the November 5 election.
• There is an element of doubt as to whether all of the voting machines and activator blocks, or "PEBs," are fully accounted for. Mr. Leahy believes that the equipment is properly receipted but admits he's not certain, telling Judicial Watch investigators "that's a hard question to answer right now."
Despite a wealth of reports detailing the problems leading up to the September 10 election (confirmed in a county Inspector General's report) and a "crisis" management style dominating the preparation, Mr. Leahy insisted repeatedly that neither Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penela's office or Governor Jeb Bush's office provided any guidance for new election procedures. "They were not aware of these problems," Leahy said of his superiors.
Because of these very serious and still unresolved issues, Judicial Watch has reserved the right to continue this Public Records Act inspection in the coming weeks, as Florida prepares for the gubernatorial election.
"Government agencies and officials must be held accountable. It's astounding that Mr. Leahy has taken it upon himself to decide not to pursue any administrative, civil or criminal action against those persons who betrayed the public's trust and violated fundamental, constitutional rights of many Miami-Dade citizens. The election on November 5 th is set to be another disaster,"
said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
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