Absentee Ballots Go Missing in Florida

RonnyJ writes "The BBC is reporting that 58,000 ballot papers have gone missing in Broward County, Florida. A police investigation has 'not uncovered any sign of criminal wrongdoing', however, the US postal service has said it is highly unlikely for 58,000 pieces of mail to just disappear. In 2000, Broward County gave Al Gore his biggest margin among Florida counties, winning 67% of the votes there."

Comments

missing huh

[Choroisothiazolinone]

Maybe the Iraqi's looted them. On the other hand its probably Bill Clintons fault.

Just a Precaution . . .

[Dausha]

I'm sure that those ballots not being sent out was just a precaution to ensure that those who were voting absentee aren't going to vote Nader.

Seriously, though, I'd like to see a break out of voting irregularities by county nation wide. That is, count the number of bona fide complaints such as missing ballots, dropped voters, etc. and post the results by county. Why by county? Because, in a majority of states the counties run the election. To what purpose? Well, once you have such irregularities mapped, then you can see which party (Dems. or Reps.) is more prone to these problems.

Re:Just a Precaution . . .

[clickster]

"I'd like to see a break out of voting irregularities by county nation wide" Done. At least for a lot of them: http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Voter_Registra tion_Fraud_Clearinghouse

Re:Just a Precaution . . .

[nontrivial]

Always a pretty sight, blaming the victim. Perhaps in fairness you should mention the RNC funded organizations in four of the swing states who are under FBI investigation pretending to be DNC funded organizations to obtain and shred Democratic voter registrations. Don't hear much about that in the news. Or perhaps the voter list that Republican operatives are using in Ohio to challenge valid voters which just happens to contain 87% democrats and 72% african americans, even though the population is pretty evenly split. Don't hear that much about that in the news either. People who say that "the media" is liberal make me want to hurl.

The trouble with the American Political Process

[SimianOverlord]

Is that the finger pointing begins before the facts have even been established. It's not clear whether this is an innocent mistake, but already voices are raised and accusations are being levelled. This may be nice for news corporations, but this is meant to be a calm and adult, and above all, very important process that should be treated with more seriousness. Perhaps dirty tricks are involved in the missing ballots. More likely they are not.

The serious point is that it debases the whole debate: look at the explosives question for example. A serious error may have been made, in the inadequate securing of high explosives placed under seal by the IAEE. Kerry immediately accuses Bush of failure to correctly secure them. But the information isn't at all clear cut, the explosives may in fact have already been moved, there are conflicting reports. From the initial hasty accusations, you have Bush aides furiously spinning a defense based on lies, then suddenly Kerry aides furiously spinning a defense of their candidates position. Somewhere in all the kerfluffle, the truth is lost, people become apathetic, and an important issue is trivialised, made "old news" and drops off the radar.

The fact is, candidates nowadays are so eager not to miss an opportunity to win a few points that the "news hysteria" near to election reaches fever pitch.

America needs a publicly funded TV and Newspaper source dedicated to impartiality like we have the Guardian and the BBC. The Guardian recently had an outreach program to get UK readers to help educate voters about how the world percieves America, to give them some perspective that is missing from their weekly digest. Unfortunately the campaign was DDOS and filibustered out of existence by republicans spinning a "foreign interference" false call to arms, but while it was ongoing I felt it did useful work and contributed myself. I hope I get an answer!

Re:The trouble with the American Political Process

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 58,000 ballots is a lot of paper. More than a ton of it. It's hard to lose that much stuff, it takes inventiveness and effort. The other way to look at it is what's the error rate. Typical, but not inspiring, for such a process would be about 1 in a million, and there aren't 58 billion people, and certainly not that many absentee voters.

2. On your random change of topic. You'd think in a war to find and secure Weapons of Mass destruction (and between Rice, Cheney, and Bush all scaring up the specter of a "mushroom cloud" I think I'm not being too petty in holding them to that) that one of the directives would be to secure and destroy the componants. And according to the US army unit commander the facility was locked down when they were there on April 10th. They left it as is, as they weren't ordered to do anything with it. The Iraqi's noted it had been looted some months later.

3. Public Funding. It's called PBS. Frontline is a great show. The problem is, there's not enough conflict and it doesn't move fast enough. When you work a 60 hour week and commute an hour each way 6 days a week, you get your news in little bites before you collapse from fatigue, and fill in the rest with talk radio, and chatter at work. The republicans have figured out how to make politics salacious, entertaining, and clipped in to short segments for people who are busy in a way people sitting in an airconditioned office aren't, and they own the stations to distribute it.

As for what you think of us. And I don't mean to be rude, hell if you're lost in Seattle, I'll give you directions as exhaustive as you need, or if the circumstances merit it, probably a lift, but we only care what the world thinks of us in so far as image has a certain utility. Beyond that, we realize we're fascinating and all, but can't you tend to your own damn garden? What might be difficult for you to appreciate, even with as much as I strongly disagree with so much my president has done, I know what fucking team I play for. And if the image war can't be won, fuck it, black hats all around. What you should really concern yourselves with is the Democrats who don't care that the war was wrong beyond it being an internal problem that we should solve. When it comes to US foriegn policy in the middle east, to quote Denis Leary, two words: Nuclear Fucking Weapons.

I'm a upper middle class white guy living in *Seattle*, don't think I can't make my peace with genocide. The last time it came up really wasn't *that* long ago.

Re:The trouble with the American Political Process

[RonnyJ]

One thing that concerns me is that, although the BBC website had this story on their front page this morning (~4 hours ago), at the time of posting I can't see a single trace of it on a couple of American-based sites, such as CNN.com (or Fox 'News'), not even under the 'Election' coverage sections.

Re:The trouble with the American Political Process

[I confirm I'm not a]

Didn't the Guardian call for the assassination of the United States' President?

Nope! A writer in the Guardian jokingly asked where John Wilkes Booth was when we needed him. I seriously doubt the Guardian editorial team want Bush assassinated. I mean, I'd be happy if he wasn't President but I appreciate the instability an assassination would cause.

The Guardian, by the way, isn't a tabloid, but it does have a tabloid section ("G2") which has lighter, often humerous stories and articles (I'm presuming that this is where the comment you refer to was made). Neither the main section nor G2 tend to be read by people who'd take the John Wilkes Booth comment seriously; Guardian readers write letters to the editor, they don't take up arms against foreign heads-of-state - they're much to lower-upper-middle-class for that ;)

democratic dictatorships

[samjam]

Here we learn that in democratic dictatorships you need to dis-enfranchise only a few people and not an entire nation.

Something the east could have done well to learn - and with Putin wanting to make direct appointments - maybe they have now?

Sam

Re:democratic dictatorships

[jc42]

... i would be happy to give the benefit of the doubt - if it wasn't for that 2000 election BS

But this is hardly anything new. If you've been paying attention in previous US elections, you'll have noticed many cases like this. Thus, in the 2000 election here in Boston, there was a news story of the discovery of 20,000 "missing" ballots in one precinct. Similar stories pop up all over. The attitude of the people running the election is basically "Oops; sorry about that." It's hard to avoid the impression of "Well, we were caught, so we'll have to count that batch."

The obvious question is "How many others are never discovered?" Hard to tell. But when I read about blocks of thousands of ballots that were somehow "misplaced", it's hard to avoid the obvious suspicion. Is it really true that only 50% or 60% of the people actually vote? Or are 30% to 40% of the ballots "lost" and never counted?

In Florida, they seem to be openly thumbing their noses at the voters by having so many ballots disappear. It's like they don't even need to pretend any more. They know that the worst that can happen is that they'll have to "discover" and count a few of the votes. But nobody will ever be punished for such things.

Inexcusable...

[jlanthripp]

If these ballots were misplaced due to error or accident, the individuals responsible should be sacked. If they were 'misplaced' (wink-wink nudge-nudge) on purpose, the individuals responsible should be sacked and jailed. And regardless of whether they're ever found, this should be investigated with all zeal and vigor.

I don't care if the votes are mostly for Democrats or Republicans - no partisans on either side should ever be able to get away with this sort of thing (assuming the votes were intentionally 'misplaced').

I plan to vote for Badnarik this year, mainly because I live in Georgia, a state Bush is pretty much guaranteed to win. If it looked close, I'd be voting for Bush. If there were no Libertarian candidate on the ballot here, I'd vote for Bush. Given that it's a certainty that either Bush or Kerry will win the Presidency, I'd rather have Bush - though the choice between the two of them is akin to the choice between having a root canal without anesthesia and having my toenails pulled out with pliers. Even though one could say I'm rooting for Bush, I want him to win fair and square, not through cheating.

Hmm

[rjw57]

Sounds like the UN will have to send in independant Elections Inspectors. Its always a pity when developing countires can't hold their own elections properly :).

Re:Slashdot description is intentionally misleadin

[Smidge204]

No, what the article says is that 60,000 ballots were sent out to the voters, "However, only 2,000 of them have been delivered." (article quote) -- as in only 2,000 of the 60,000 recipients actually got them.

Noplace in the article does it even suggest what you claim.

Remember that the ballots need to be postmarked by election day. Delays in their delivery is basically the same as denying them of their vote.

And you're right, there is no way the post office would lose that many letters. Which leads me to this next article quote: "Meanwhile, the US postal service inspectorate said it was highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail had just disappeared. A spokesman said inspectors were trying to establish whether the ballots were ever delivered to the postal service."

So there is a possibility that the 58,000 "missing" ballots never even made it to the post office in the first place, so they are investigating that. If this proves to be the case, someone's in a lot of trouble. If there is proof that all 60k ballots were delivered to the post office, then there will have to be more investigation as to how they didn't get to their destination. (And someone will STILL be in a lot of trouble, because the post office isn't prone to simply "misplacing" letters by the tens of thousands...)
=Smidge=

The Banana Republic of Florida.

[macdaddy357]

This is exactly what you could expect in any third-world banana republic: A rigged election to make it look like you have a democratic society when the real decisions are made in smoke-filled rooms.

digitect is changing the story and he's trolling.

[phyruxus]

digitect>>It doesn't say 58,000 ballots are missing. What it says is that of 60,000 absentee ballots distributed, only 2,000 have been returned so far .

From the article: "Some 60,000 absentee ballots were despatched by authorities in Broward County, north of Miami, this month. However, only 2,000 of them have been delivered."

Delivered, not returned. Note the HUGE FREAKING DIFFERENCE. Why do you lie? What's in it for you? Especially such an obvious and easy to see through lie, since everyone can see in the FIRST PARAGRAPH that what you posted is blatantly untrue?

digitect>>There is no way the post office is going to loose 58,000 pieces of individually mailed letters, all which happen to be ballots.

Yeah, which means someone else probably did it. Now, lets see... who has a vested interest in and history of suppressing votes in florida... rrr.... reee.... repuh.... republi.... republicaaa... (note: the completion of this word is left as an excersize to anyone with at least one functioning brain cell).

digitect>> This is yet another case of Slashdot maliciously pumping false headlines and summaries to generate controversy (and thereby, hits) again.

Dude, you changed the wording of the story, then you attack slashdot for reporting something false. I think that digitect is clearly trolling.

digitect>>Would everybody please stop reading "Politics:" topics so we can get back to Nerd stuff please?

Oh, yeah, I'm going to turn my back on politics on the eve of debatably the most important election ever, because you don't like the light reality casts on a certain state or party. Don't like the truth? Try honesty. It's better than booze or church, and it's 100% compatible with reality!

When did those days exist?

[porkchop_d_clown]

The days when Jefferson's opponents accused him of planning to undermine every form of morality?

The days when Lincoln was accused of having sired bastards?

The days when, who was it, Adams?, was accused of procuring women for the Russian Tsar?

The days when fist fights were breaking out on the floor of Congress?

The days when candidates were being accused of insanity? Senility? Stupidity?

American elections have always been nasty.

Re:Slashdot description is intentionally misleadin

[goatan]

Someone needs to stop reading and posting BBC tabloid stories on Slashdot.

Here Here let's not bother questioning what were fed by politicians etc. and we should all stop looking at independent news and believe only those who show partisanship to our favourite party.

shame on whoever posted this story for highlighting a possible election problem it's not as if it's important.