I couldn’t do it all, just picked out a few precinct numbers, but we appear to be very polarized on this issue. In one neighborhood they were 83% in favor of the strong mayor, in another they were 98% against it:
Hud Meeting Room, NW 7th St. 543 – 75% yes
Culmer Neighborhood Service Center 533 – 93% no
West Miami Middle School 423 - 79% yes
Hialeah Middle School 314 – 74% yes
Hialeah Fire Station 317 – 70% yes
RR Morton in Homestead 826 - 98% no
Coral Gables Youth Center 605 - 73% yes
Florida City Town Hall 922 – 89% no
Aventura Government Center 103 – 54% yes
Key Biscayne Community Center 51 – 63% yes
Edison Courts Community Center 506 – 84% no
see more in comments section....
Here is a good question for you:
There were 150,399 ballots cast in the election.
If you add the yes and no votes together they total 149,335.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER 1,064 ballots? The election department can't say, "Oh, they didn't vote on that item." There was only one item on the ballot.
BY THE WAY, IT APPEARS BLOGSPOT GOES DOWN A LOT. DON'T DESPAIR, KEEP COMING BACK.
7 comments:
Homestead Senior Activity Cen. 915 - 62% no
N. Miami Beach Senior High 120 – 53% no
Gulliver Prep, N Kendall 616 – 63% yes
Flagler Dog Track 551 – 83% yes
Florida City Town Hall 922 – 89% no
Goulds Church of Christ 928 – 51% no
Opa Locka Sr. Citizen Bldg 265 – 90% no
Sweetwater Elementary 409 – 54% yes
Miami Gardens Church of Ch222 – 93% no
Miami Beach Regional Library 27 – 80% yes
Doral Isles Island Club 366 - 77% yes
Miami City Hall 546 – 65% yes
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Brickell 569 – 72% yes
sigh.
This is very bad news, perfect for a demagogue. Think of how anyone who looks at this will campaign.
Today in the HERALD they called these 1,000 plus votes "Pesky." Not.
Less than 1,000 votes in Florida changed the presidency. This is a big deal!!
It is really hard to undervote on those machines. If you walk away without pushing the button, they sound like a microwave oven that is done, until the vote button is pushed. The paper said there is a log of whether a person was there and the clerk had to push vote.
However, voters who are not familiar with the machine, may not touch the screen firmly enough, and then they hit vote without checking the screen to see if they made the selection stick. And I suspect that is where they are getting the undervotes. Even though the machines are not "button"machines, you cant be timid about laying your finger to the screen.
I think "Keep Finger" has a good point. The elections dept. should do workshops where the undercounts are occurring and find out why. Is the problem in certain ethnic areas or with seniors? Do we know if it is across the board? Someone want to call Lester Sola and find out?
I think "Keep Finger" has a good point. The elections dept. should do workshops where the undercounts are occurring and find out why. Is the problem in certain ethnic areas or with seniors? Do we know if it is across the board? Someone want to call Lester Sola and find out?
As your fellow South Floridian, and until I recently "retired" as Clerk of a polling station, I have some insight about this topic.
First, please try to blank your mind of nefarious goings on about undercounting votes, if that is the case with some people.
We have any number of auditors and fail-safe techniques, not only when we set up polling stations, but during and after when we deliver the chips inside the iVos, to the drop-off points.
At the end of the voting day, you can go to any polling station, and the Clerk will have pinned up a tape count with all the votes, for any resident to see in plain sight.
This is but a mere sprinkling of background information about the new voting machines, which I feel at liberty to reveal (there are many others, of course, that I and others cannot).
You mention human error, and if there are certain people who are more likely to commit these errors during voting days.
Yes, there are -- elderly people in my precinct, are more likely to commit mistakes, no matter how many times they have voted on these machines.
Part of that is just a question of intimidation about technology (although as I tell them, if you can use an ATM, you can vote on the iVotronics machine), but there is also the factor of not always wanting to vote on each and every proposal in the ballot.
There were many people in my predominantly black precinct, who nevertheless just came to vote for Mel Martinez, e.g.
That's their call, of course.
But it does represent a kind of undercounting in the minds of other voters, who question where the other votes went.
To repeat, human error, simple, non-conspiratorial, is the overwhelming reason for these tallies being awry.
That includes the voter's error, but also, sadly at times, our own.
What can be done about that, since the public are bombarded with pamphlets, cable tap programmes etc. about voting, I really do not know.
By all means, find out where the undercounted votes went, but I think you'll find, the question is "pesky" because the reasons are embarrassing to mention out loud.
Cheers,
Victoria
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