Why are Petitions Judged on a Higher Standard Than Absentee Ballots? By Geniusofdespair

Harvey Ruvin, The Miami Dade Clerk of Courts is reviewing the Petition signatures for the Mayor's Recall. Ruvin wrote an article in the Miami Herald on how he would be handling the Recall count. He has hired a forensic document examiner to look at the petitions/signatures. Say what?

This is overkill and I don't like it. The bar is set too high for Petitions or too low for Absentee Ballots.

I recently looked at absentee ballot envelopes in 2 small precincts at the Elections Department. I found one with NO SIGNATURE at all that was indeed counted. I saw whited out signature lines, counted. I saw two that were ink traced over pencil...counted. My colleague found one with no signature but it was counted because it was mailed return receipt requested. I saw many ballots where the person did not print their name where it was required - blank. All of these mistakes would be thrown out by Harvey Ruvin but were acceptable at Elections Department. In the last Seijas recall, Ruvin threw out petitions because instead of printing their name - people joined letters where it said "print".

I wanted to compare signatures on the absentee ballot envelopes that I looked at against the elections database. I was told I would need a court order to view the database signatures (even though I did it before a few years ago for Amendment 4 petitions).

I am still trying to determine how elections compares signatures on a deluge of incoming absentee ballots during an election. They said they do it, but how? I asked elections staff but the answer was unclear. A former election staffer said that signatures were verified by a computer program. Then why is Harvey Ruvin not using that program if it is reliable enough for absentee ballots? Why waste our tax dollars to have 20 people at computers comparing signatures to the data base signatures? Something just doesn't add up. What also irks me, if you don't sign your name you can't vote on election day period, but you can vote absentee without a signature. Why are there so many different standards for us to be counted? Is consistency of method so much to ask?

Here is the entire article written by Ruvin:


Miami-Dade recall signatures will be counted carefully and credibly, county clerk pledges

BY HARVEY RUVIN
Nov. 28, 2010

As the greater community begins to anticipate the realities and potential consequences of the recall effort launched by Norman Braman to unseat Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, the volume of the debate is rising and emotions on both sides are heating up.

In this atmosphere, it is essential that the public have a clear picture of and a high degree of confidence in the fairness and accuracy of the process we will use to canvass and tabulate the approximately 113,000 individual petition forms delivered to my office by truck on Nov. 5. The Elections Department has established that 51,992 valid signatures of voters are needed to force a recall election.

To help you visualize the utter massiveness of this unprecedented submission: picture each petition form laid end to end, spanning 24 miles of paper, enough to cross Biscayne Bay from downtown Miami to South Beach and back again — twice.

Mr. Braman submitted 113 boxes with approximately 113,000 separate legal-size petition forms, each with the signature of only one petitioner, the signature of the circulator and the signature and stamp of the notary. Each box contains about 1,000 forms, 10 batches in a box. Once submitted, all of them became public record!

As such, maximizing security and enabling access and retrievability became job one of the petition-canvassing process. Managing and modernizing court and property records successfully have given the clerk’s office personnel valuable and relevant experience. It’s a part of our DNA as an organization.

Our first challenge was to log in the total submission, reverifying the batching and number of the boxes. We then stored them in a fully secured area, laid out and maintained in consecutive order so as to constitute a “library” of the actual paper petition forms.

We then systematically scanned each and every petition form with high resolution, high-speed electronic scanners, all the while maintaining the “library” placement of the 113 boxes for easy access to any individual form if needed for any reason.

The scanned images will be viewed alongside the signatures appearing in the voter registration rolls on some 20-plus dual-screen computer workstations, thereby facilitating the step-by-step comparative judgment process without having to expose the original forms to loss or damage.

We will also check each form’s full compliance with the requirements of County Ordinance 12-23, the County Attorney’s Office having already passed on the constitutionality and legal sufficiency of the ordinance.

The next challenge was to select the individuals to be utilized at these workstations where, among other tasks, the difficult comparisons must be made between a recent signature on a petition form and a signature on a voter-registration card that might be much older.

Though tempting, I rejected deputizing Elections Department part-timers who were already trained in similar processes involving verifying absentee ballots, in order to avoid even the appearance of bias or conflict of interest.

I will likewise seek to screen out anyone from the process who has taken a public position on either side or for any reason feels unable to be fair and impartial.

My decision is to deploy approximately 40-plus highly capable and impartial personnel from the Clerk’s Office operations who are already versed in technological innovation and the responsibilities inherent in having custody of the public record.

In addition, we have secured the services of one of South Florida’s most outstanding forensic document examiners (handwriting experts), Dianne Flores, to provide the training and screening of our team. She will also be available to offer assistance in the most-difficult-to-determine instances, which will be batched for her review.

Having served on several canvassing boards over the years, I can appreciate the intricacies and sometimes-tedious nature of the signature-comparison process. I know that it requires total focus and concentration.

I have, therefore, resolved to allow observers, but to keep them at a prescribed distance from the workstations where this demanding work is to be done. I will not allow anyone to distract, intimidate, influence or in any way disrupt the environment needed to do this work.

Detailed records will be kept so that every single decision to accept or reject can be easily reviewed, and any individual paper petition form can be easily accessed and examined. This assures all sides that there will be ample opportunities to review any decision once we have finished our job and are in a position to certify the results of our canvass.

We are determined to provide the professional, methodical, neutral, secure and transparent process that the people of Miami-Dade County demand and have a right to expect.