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FUCK FLORIDA AND ALL THOSE STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS LIVING IN THAT WASTE OF FUCKING SPACE!!!!!!!! CUT A TRENCH FIVE MILES WIDE, JUST BELOW TALLAHASEE, AND SHOVE THE WHOLE SHIT PILE BACK TO CUBA!!! THESE FUCKERS, TWO YEARS LATER, STILL CAN NOT FUCKING COUNT!!!! FUCKING VOTE FLORIDA AND CALIFUCKINGFORINA OUT OF THE UNION NOW!!!!!
1,800 Uncounted Votes Found in Miami-Dade
AP Wednesday: Janet Reno leaves her campaign headquarters. Friday, September 13, 2002
WASHINGTON — Few answers have been given to explain why more than 1,800 votes in Miami-Dade County were only found two days after Florida's primary election.
The votes were found when election officials reviewed four precincts with unusually low voter turnout Thursday. Many of those additional votes would likely go to Janet Reno, who won Miami-Dade by more than a 3-1 margin in the Democratic gubernatorial primary but trailed Bill McBride statewide.
The votes have not yet been submitted to the state as part of Miami-Dade's vote total from Tuesday's primary.
McBride's unofficial victory margin was 8,196 votes, according to the state, while Reno needed a difference of 6,751 votes or less to qualify for an automatic machine recount.
Reno would need to cut McBride's margin by 1,445 votes to trigger the recount. The additional ballots from the four precincts would probably reduce the difference by several hundred votes, based on the margin of Reno's victory in Miami-Dade.
AP Wednesday: Bill McBride speaks to supporters. Reno will not concede the race because of balloting problems in her home county.
One of the four precincts was at Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty City, with 1,633 registered voters. The first count showed 87 votes cast there, but the review found more than 610 votes.
"The first four (precincts) were just off the chart," said David Leahy, Miami-Dade's elections chief. "This is an indicator that the system did not work as it was designed to."
Leahy believes that in some cases poll workers failed to close down the touchscreen voting machines properly, leading the votes on those machines not to be collected Tuesday. But he added that it is possible some of the polling stations' low vote numbers are correct, reflecting delays and technical glitches that kept some machines from being used part of the day.
Dorothy Walton, precinct clerk at Pilgrim Rest church, said she wasn't told the proper closing procedures for the machines.
"I didn't know either that when they set them up, they didn't hook them all together," said Walton.
In her precinct, seven out of the 12 machines were working. But just two were linked, so results were only collected from those machines, she said.
Jaqui Colyer, a Democratic candidate for state Representative, also complained of voting problems in the precinct, which is in the district she ran in.
When elections officials first told her that less than 90 people voted in the precinct, she said she started calling her supporters. When she had talked to about 100 who said they voted for her, she became suspicious.
But when officials announced Thursday they had found 610 votes, she became incensed.
"Were they under the bed?" she asked. "If they can lose 600 votes in that precinct, how many more did they lose?"
She also complained that long lines at the polls sent home many potential voters.
One supporter told her: "I had to go to work. I love you Jaqui, but I don't love you enough to make a lifetime job out of voting."
Posts: 771 | From: Farmington | Registered: Oct 2000
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