Bush gets absentee ballot bill (Jeb Bush)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sat, May. 01, 2004


LEGISLATURE 2004 | VOTING

Bush gets absentee ballot bill

The governor will now decide whether to sign a bill that does away with a witness signature on absentee ballots.

BY ERIKA BOLSTAD
[e-mail]


TALLAHASSEE - State lawmakers Friday night wiped out the requirement that absentee ballots include a witness signature, a decision that some Democrats and South Florida legislators worry could make it more difficult to ferret out election fraud.

The House voted 100-12 to send the bill to the governor Friday, the final day of the 60-day legislative session. The Senate voted 30-8 on the measure last week.

Critics of the bill say that examining witness signatures on absentee ballots has unearthed ballot fraud in suspicious elections, including the 1997 Miami mayoral election.
(snip)

Wiping out the witness requirement means losing a basic means of detecting fraud, said Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat who cast one of the 12 votes against the bill.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/8563747.htm

[maddezmom]

1. Jeb will be printing up absentee ballots for Nov

this reeks.

[leftchick]

2. At this point I think Florida is lost cause....

There is nothing jebbie wont do to secure FL for his spineless brother. It is now a banana republic all its own... :(

[Mika]

4. It will continue to be one as long as the Dems keep supporting "exiles"

Its a bipartisan banana republic. Its time to DEMAND changes from OUR party.

charts from opensecrets.org



Sugar:
Long-Term Contribution Trends
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?ind=A1200



CANF founder and Clinton fundraiser Jorge Mas Canosa & Bill Clinton

[bahrbearian]

3. I vote absentee in Washington State and we don't have to have

a witness signature, it works fine. I like having the paper trail to verify my vote.

[SheilaT]

5. Here in Kansas we have advance balloting.

It's an incredibly effective way to get out the vote. Two years ago I went door-to-door registering Democrats and helping them apply for advance ballots. Some huge percentage of them (like 90 percent or more) are returned. It's a wonderful thing for people who might have trouble getting to the polling place for any reason whatsoever.

It's an important part of the get out the vote thing here.

[Mika]

6. Everyone should Google "Manuel Yip"

Do this google search,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Manuel+Yip%22+%2Bmiami


These fraudsters are Jeb's people.

[Racenut20]

7. This is interesting because we are always reading how

The Cuban vote is republican, or the Hispanic vote is republican. We Democrats just need to work on increasing our "market share"..

[teryang]

8. They'll be using the lists of the nursing homes

...and alfs to create thousands of illegal absentee ballots from incompetent citizens which will be worked by party activists. They were successful with a few thousand of illegal absentee ballots last time. It was enough to throw the election.

[Mika]

9. That's how they do it in Miami

That, and paying people $10 for the honor of filling out their absentee ballots. Large segments of the Miamicuban community simply turn over their ballots to the candidates "registration centers" set up all over the county (at taxpayer expense) to get their $10 ballot "rebate".

Its done openly - and nothing is done.

Its the way thing were done in Batista's Cuba.

[teryang]

10. That's how they do it on the I-4 correidor

That's what they did last time and the two Leon county circuit court judges said that Gore's attorneys didn't prove fraud. The judges apparently didn't read the Florida Statutes, you don't need to prove fraud. Absentee ballots executed or delivered in violation of the statutes are void ab initio. The statutes were written this way after a lengthy study of voting fraud in Dade county. There is a reason why the statute was written that way, because absentee ballots are so easily falsified and putting the fraud burden on the party wronged is unfair and impractical. Improper execution and delivery of ballots is all that is required. Deposing a very limited number of people can show this and Gore did. Gore shouldn't have given up on the appeals he would have won on the absentee ballot issue. Now, John Ellis and the repuke legislature are putting in the fix.

Apparently they've learned from the last episode. Legislative attempts to change election methods codifying the method to choose electors close to or after the election are illegal according to the US Code (i can't remember the citations.) Only a small percentage of absentee ballots in Florida were military, most were sick, elderly and disabled persons.

[Mika]

11. The dead vote in Florida too, ya know

Unregistered voters cast ballots in Dade
Dead man's vote, scores of others were allowed illegally, Herald finds
http://www.englishfirst.org/ballots/deadvote.htm

André Alismé died of cancer in 1997. Yet a vote in his name was cast in last month's presidential election, one of more than 100 illegal ballots uncovered by The Herald in Miami-Dade County.

Violating rules meant to safeguard the integrity of balloting, Miami-Dade poll workers allowed scores of unregistered voters -- including out-of-state residents -- to vote on Nov. 7.

They cast ballots at polling places where they were not listed on voter rolls. All they had to do was sign sworn statements that they were eligible to vote.

They were not.

Nobody at the polls checked, as required by county regulations and state law -- which meant that those illegal ballots counted in one of the closest presidential races in history.

All of those voters would have been caught before casting ballots had poll workers followed a simple procedure -- making a phone call to elections headquarters to check whether each voter was indeed eligible to vote.

The Herald examined ballots cast at just 138 of Miami-Dade's 617 precincts, finding that 144 ineligible voters had been allowed to sign in at polls where they were not registered. If that trend holds true in the rest of Dade, hundreds more illegal ballots may have been cast.

Poll workers overwhelmed by heavy voter turnout struggled with two competing mandates: sustaining citizens' right to vote while combating fraud at the ballot box. As a result, the anti-fraud rules weren't always followed:

*  Frustrated poll workers said they were stymied by constant busy signals when they tried to call an Elections Department hot line to verify voter registration.
*  Some were so poorly trained that they didn't know the verification requirements. They said they let people vote -- some without any identification -- based on gut feelings that voters were honest.
*  Other poll workers, feeling pressured by long lines and short tempers, said they ignored the rules or bent them just to avoid ugly confrontations.

Some poll workers were too trusting, said Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor David Leahy. ``Some clerks obviously did not follow procedures,'' Leahy said. ``A lot of what we do is on the honor system. Clearly you cannot have a deceased person voting.''

Plenty more --> http://www.englishfirst.org/ballots/deadvote.htm

[teryang]

13. Thanks for the South Florida reports, Mika

The former United States is the twilight zone.

[Florida_Geek]

12. This is OK

I do not understand why people on here are upset about it.

The voter's signature is checked. And that all that counts. There are NO way to check the witness signature.