Don't look to The Miami Herald for the news, by gimleteye

Here is a great review of the Florida Hometown Democracy mess. The Miami Herald did not report on Florida Hometown Democracy, the petition drive to put on the 2008 November ballot a challenge to the unbridled development that has wrecked the Florida landscape and accounts for the biggest bust in housing in 100 years.

It is a shame, because the most egregious faults/errors/omissions took place right here, in the Miami Dade Supervisor of Elections Office. The Miami Herald deserves all the rebukes that readers and subscribers can muster. I know The Herald executives couldn't care less what eyeonmiami has to say, but representative democracy in America is in shambles and the mainstream media won't report how it is happening, day by day!

Don't believe me? Read on:


Florida’s shaky democracy breaks down on Hometown

Development interests band together, defeat grass-roots effort

By Kenric Ward
Treasure Coast Palm

Thursday, February 7, 2008

While the United States expends blood and treasure bringing democracy to Iraq, the power brokers back home keep Florida’s feudal fiefdom intact.

The killing of Florida Hometown Democracy was trumpeted by state Republican Chairman Jim Greer, who declared, “Today is a great day for Florida. By refusing to provide Hometown Democracy’s special-interest amendment the number of signatures it requires to be placed on the Florida constitution, the people of Florida prevented a scenario that would require voters to approve thousands of land-use decisions.”

Democrats weren’t gloating so much (at least not openly), but the party was MIA in this fight. Not one elected official publicly pushed for the constitutional amendment. No one, it appeared, even supported the idea of a petition drive to put the question to a vote of the people. So much for democracy.

And that’s precisely the problem growth-weary Floridians face — an entrenched two-party system that goes along to get along with a coalition of developers, builders, real estate agents, architects, engineers, appraisers, assorted contractors and taxpayer-funded “professional planners.”

In less than nine months, the Florida Chamber of Commerce cranked up two organizations to knock out Hometown Democracy. The first, Floridians for Smarter Growth, staged a rival petition drive designed to confuse the issue and jam the system. The second group, Save Our Constitution, launched an unprecedented campaign to revoke FHD signatures.

Both outfits were amply funded, of course. Smarter Growth raised $2.99 million from May to December, with $1.75 million coming from the national and state homebuilder associations. With just 277 donors, the average contribution was $10,787.
Save Our Constitution, tapping many of the same corporate coffers, spent, at last report, an astounding $41 per mailing in its revocation effort. A late flurry from Broward County sent the unofficial total of revoked petitions to 18,000 statewide.

The Chamber’s double-barreled shotgun outspent Hometown 3-to-1, but neither opposition campaign necessarily doomed the referendum. FHD President Lesley Blackner said her organization submitted 814,000 petitions — more than the 611,000 needed to qualify for the November ballot.

No, the coup de grace was delivered at the supervisor of elections’ offices, which verify and validate ballot petitions. Suffering a failure rate of 20 percent to 30 percent in some counties, FHD came up short. Or so our public servants say.

Since supervisors have almost total discretion in how they review petitions, the reasons for rejection varied widely. Observers noted these examples:
• In Martin County, a petition was thrown out because the signer used her middle initial instead of her full middle name, as it appeared on her voter registration.
• In Miami Dade, an untold number were bounced because Spanish signers inverted the month and date of their birthdates (per Spanish and European custom).
• In Volusia County, hundreds were tossed because petition addresses didn’t match registration records — even though address changes are permissible on petitions.

Technicalities or fatal flaws, such actions resurrect the dark goblins of Florida’s infamous 2000 presidential election. Because each county still sets its own counting rules and standards, confusion continues to reign.

Whatever side one took on the Gore-vs.-Bush debacle, FHD’s experience demonstrates that Florida still has a serious credibility problem with its electoral machinery. Two weeks before the submission deadline, Secretary of State Kurt Browning announced that his computer-based petition tallying system had a “glitch.” Admitting that problems had been known since last spring, he took the system down three weeks before the Feb. 1 submission deadline, leaving petitioners flying blind on their final approach.

Problems were compounded last Friday when some supervisors reported an unspecified number of petitions were never even examined. Officials said they just ran out of time. At least those hanging chads got a look eight years ago.

The Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which raised $134,000 for FHD, called on Browning to extend the deadline to make every petition count. The argument has merit because state law is contradictory. It requires only that petitions submitted at least 30 days before the deadline be tallied. Yet thousands of petitions still came in before the deadline. Why wouldn’t they count?

Such errors and omissions cut to the very core of democracy. But, short of a successful court challenge, don’t expect the complaints to sway the state’s election bureaucracy. The corporate masters and their political poltroons got the outcome they wanted. End of story.

Meantime, the chamber’s hired guns keep their illusory, big-money game going by warning it’s a “sure thing” that FHD will make the ballot in 2010.

Any takers on that? With the forces arrayed against Hometown Democracy, there’s a better chance of peace in Iraq.