The Political Whore

The elections office in Hillsborough has started its task of resuming the count this afternoon, but it could take until tomorrow before we have final numbers out of that county. The St. Petersburg Times reports:

A final tally of votes in Hillsborough County may not be finished until sometime tomorrow, says canvassing board member Judge James Dominguez. Technical difficulties stopped the counting of votes early this morning with tens of thousands of ballots cast during early voting still not tabulated. At about 12:30 p.m. today, the vote counting began again. Dominguez said the task will start with counting about 6,000 absentee ballots cast Tuesday.

Three Democratic challengers’ efforts hang in the balance: Kevin Beckner, who we project has beaten incumbent Commissioner Brian Blair; Phyllis Busansky, who is a few thousand votes behind incumbent Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson; and Stephen Gorham, who is some 15,000 votes behind incumbent School Board member Carol Kurdell and faces a tough task to make up that many votes.

Despite a well-coordinated Vote Local effort in Pinellas County by the local Democratic Party, Republicans nearly swept the down-ballot races even though Barack Obama carried the county.

So what happened? Did Vote Local fail?

Yes and no.

From a standpoint of getting local Democrats elected, yes, it failed. An underlying cause, however, is likely that the candidates, with a few exceptions, just weren’t that good or funded enough to be competitive. It also appears that there was not an overwhelming sentiment for change on the County Commission, despite the Jim Smith scandal last year. Where Vote Local had successes down ballot, in the apparent Hillsborough victory for Kevin Beckner and the Pinellas School Board seat captured by Nina Hayden, the candiates were energizing, articulate, good on camera and got the Democratic voters excited.

“Our job was not persuasion but just to convince people to vote the whole ballot,” said Larry Biddle, a Democratic consultant in St. Petersburg who worked on the Vote Local effort.

Vote Local did manage to increase voter participation down ballot in Pinellas, but only by a few percentage points in some of the races. Raw vote totals are more impressive: 14,000 more Pinellas voters cast ballots in the Supervisor of Elections race in 2008 than in 2004; 10,000 more voted in the County Commission District 3 race.

I woke up excited and nervous. While I didn’t have any trouble voting in the previous few elections, my husband was turned away both times due to ongoing address issues; he submitted an address change on three separate occasions, but none were ever recorded anywhere official. This time around, we had proper voter ID’s in hand when we took the short walk to our local precinct in St. Petersburg, the Dwight H. Jones Neighborhood Center, which is located in the heart of a city-operated low- and mid-income housing community and across the street from two many-storied assisted living facilities.

The line was short, primarily made up of minorities, and everyone was in good spirits. We all seemed to be on the same boat — not a McCain supporter to be found – and all of us agreed that change was in the air.

My hubbie and I made it to the first pollworker table together and both of us had pollworker-related problems almost at once. I signed “LPolk” next to my name and knew I’d made a mistake as soon as the woman compared it to my license signature, which read “Leilani Polk.” The woman damn near had a heart attack when she saw what I’d done and spent the next few minutes anxiously hemming and hawing.

“I’ll just write out my first name,” I said lamely, but just as I scrawled an “L,” she snatched the book away from me, freaked out a little more, then firmly lectured me on the laws and how she could get in trouble and did I know that my signature had to look exactly as it did on my license? But then she talked herself down, admitting that she was the only one who’d see both sigs and after I pleaded with her to let me vote, she relented and let me through.

Phil’s pollworker couldn’t find his name in her book. When she asked if he’d moved recently and he answered yes, she started to tear off a provisional ballot. This was just as they’d found my name in the book. “Woah, Woah, woah, hold on there a minute — my wife moved at the same time and she’s in there,” he told his pollworker. That’s when he found out she wasn’t even looking at the right name. His last name is “Bardi”; she mistakenly looked up “Baron.” Once she had the right name, we were set and we both voted successfully.

This from Buddy Johnson’s office at 12:14 p.m. A font of detailed information it is not:

Election Day Report

Hillsborough County- The Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) office announces a busy but smooth morning at polling locations around the County.  While lines have been reported at a number of locations, wait times have been reasonable and voting is proceeding at every polling location.

The Elections Office anticipated a large turnout and pre-planned for all conceivable issues that might arise with an election of this size. The SOE has experienced minor issues, all of which have been promptly resolved.  Precinct Election Officials (PEO’s) have been well-trained to resolve issues at the polls and are knowledgeable of the proper procedural response to ensure a smooth voting process.  The Elections Office has an extensive telephone support team designed to facilitate this process.

In the event of an optical scanner malfunction, the Supervisor of Elections office has 15 roving technical support crews to speedily resolve any equipment problems.  When confronted with technical problems, all PEO’s have been trained on back-up procedures to ensure that voting can continue uninterrupted until the technical crew arrives.  In the event of a machine malfunction, the protocol is to place the paper ballots in the emergency ballot bin.  After the polls close, those ballots will be removed by two PEO’s of different political party affiliation and placed in a secure case.  Those ballots are then scanned into a fully-functioning optical scan voting machine to be tabulated after the polls close.

Links to all our Election Day coverage here.

CL Soundboard guru Franki Weddington is reporting four-hour wait times to vote at the USF Marshall Center.

“They said that part of the problem is that people are taking a really long time because they don’t know anything about the amendments they are voting on. Poll workers are going around and handing out descriptions of all the amendments. Most people brought friends and newspapers. Fortunately I brought a crossword. I’ve been in line for 45 minutes and I’ve moved 10 feet. People are squatting, sitting down, hanging out. It seems like everyone is pretty resigned and happy. I’m surprised at how little bitching I’ve heard. People just expected this I guess.”

UPDATE: Franki called in just before 2:15 p.m. to report she had finally finished voting, and it ended up taking only (!) about two and a half hours. The lines are still long, but the officials at the Marshall Center were brining in more privacy booths to augment the paltry 15 they had at the beginning of the day.

I cast my ballot last week. So did Wayne Garcia. Now it’s your turn. Did you vote today? How did it go? Where did you vote? Did they have enough personel and voting machines? Was there a long line? Let us know in the comment section.

Blessed weekend relief is just 8 hours away! In the meantime, here’s all the poiltical and media news that matters, with updates throughout the day in the box to the right:

• Game over in the Great Lakes State; McCain campaign is pulling out of Michigan.
• Orlando mayor is down with the LGBT and domestic-partner benefits.
• A South Florida congresswoman changes her mind about the bailout after a visit to her district.
• Confuserating the voters.
• How does an elevator explode? Here’s how.
• Bailout 2: Porky’s Revenge, set to open today in the House.
• Deggans is right about Ifill being even-handed; she was also boring as shit and didn’t follow up well.
• Tampa Bay’s got itself a brand-spanking newly confirmed US Attorney for the Middle District.
• St. Pete bans soliciting in the medians, screws the Times, MDA.
• Shooting guns and talkin’ politics: sounds like a GOP fundraiser to me.
• Oh, and the Duke insists that the biggest loser in last night’s debate was … the MSM!
• A maverick he is not. No maverick is he: