More FL ballot bungling - 268 absentee votes never opened [View All]

[ringmastery]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/states/florida/counties/broward_county/6627385.htm

Memo to 268: Your vote didn't count
Absentee ballots were untallied
BY ERIKA BOLSTAD AND NOAH BIERMAN
[e-mail]

SHOCKED: Candidate Margaret Hostetter's vote didn't count.

Diane Whatley mailed her absentee ballot a week early for last year's primary election.

Eleven months later, her ballot sits -- still unopened and uncounted -- in a file with 267 others in the Broward State Attorney's office. The ballots, postmarked as much as a week before the primary, went unnoticed in a pile of thousands of pieces of elections mail dumped in the Broward elections office in the frenzied days leading up to the primary.

Until Tuesday, when they were contacted by Herald reporters, none of the 268 disenfranchised voters had any idea their votes didn't count.

''It's amazing,'' said Whatley, a 50-year-old former poll worker from Coral Springs. ``It counted for squat.''

Among the disenfranchised was a school-board candidate whose vote for herself was never tallied. Margaret Hostetter lost, but by more than one vote.

''I guess I'm a little flabbergasted,'' Hostetter said. ``There has to be something that gives people the assurance that their vote will be counted.''