the 941

It has begun. If you have any news, saw anything interesting or janky when you voted, or just want to holla at yer boy (whoever that may be) give us a comment.

Hundreds of voters forced into provisional ballots because phone verification system is down. (H-T)

BREAKING NEWS (2 p.m.) — Just cruised a few polling places during the lunch hour. No waits. Most of the poll workers said that things have been very slow after a brief morning rush. If you still need to get your vote on, try leaving work a little early and you’ll be home in time to cook dinner. Pictures after the updates.

Thoughtful blog post on voting from Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws.

Voting machines break at two precincts. (H-T)

WSLR will have live election coverage starting at 5 p.m.

Voters tricked into signing up for absentee ballots having trouble at polls. (H-T)

Start your election night right, or, uhm, left, with CL’s Election Night Drinking Game.

Speaking of drinking, here are some Election Night Parties around town.

Vote for Benson, or Benson?

Flash your sticker for free stuff at these places.

McCain and Obama supporters: getting along, playing with a tiny dog and hanging outside the demarcation zone of a polling place on 12th Street.

Poll volunteers on Bahia Vista, just a tad bored, waiting for the post-work rush.

And here’s the MSNBC Election Widget, just in case you’re too lazy — or too scared — to watch the TV or cruise other sites.

Kathy Dent’s crew is nervous, Venice is burning and Joel’s got the whole thing handicapped. Man, we love Election Day.

Because we often find ourselves desperately searching for role models, we’re introducing a new feature this afternoon. Daily Hero doesn’t need much of an explanation — we’re simply looking for people to inspire us, to lead us, and perhaps to wear their drawers outside their pants. As the name so subtly implies, we’ll be scouring the world, or more likely the Internets, every day for our hero. But as always, if you’ve got a suggestion, let us know in the comments or dash a missive to max at creativeloafing dot com.

Our inaugural Daily Hero is well known around these parts. The last year for Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent has been — how do we put this? — craptastic. She presided over one of the least credible elections in modern U.S. history and was hounded by “pesky activists” — then news broke that she’d known about the problems with the voting machines two months before Vern’s “victory.”

We tend to go into a funk when our root beer goes flat. But when faced with Michael Brown-esque adversity, did Kathy Dent slink away? Hell no. Because Kathy Dent has pluck, people. She’s got more pluck in her pinky than you do in your whole —

Okay. We can’t anymore. According to Jeremy Wallace, Kathy Dent is thinking about running again for Supervisor of Elections again in ’08, and really, we can’t think of anything more ridiculous than the idea of her being reelected. It seems so bullheaded. So stubborn.

So … heroic.

Kathy Dent, we salute you.

+ Will Rudy be Bush III? [alternet]
+ James Fallows seems to think so. [the atlantic]
+ More imporantly: SPICE GIRLS REUNION! [rolling stone]
+ Oh. And apparently some chick named after a city in France is free. [tmz]
+ Who needs ES&S? Not Christine Jennings, and now, not Sarasota County. [ht]
+ So that immigration bill that has Glenn Beck’s sphincter in a knot might not happen. [cnn]
+ Finally, Romney takes some heat. [huffpo]
+ Who you got in the Bush’s Last Man Overboard Pool? [slate]
+ OMG I’M TRIPPING. [slog]
+ So that’s why we smoke Camels. [boing boing]
+ Free online film school, if you’re interested. [metafilter]
+ Need some help figuring out what to do today? [found]
+ Hipsterism 2.0. [ypulse]

Computer. Keeps. Crashing. Lost. Post. Three. Times. Repeatedly. Stabbing myself. In the temple. With thumbtacks.

Anti-panhandling ordinance to be decided finally on Tuesday in Manatee. Odds are 1:2 they follow Sarasota’s lead and try to make homelessness the next guy’s problem.
[ht]
Alcohol is in trouble. Its longtime slogn — “Booze: It’s better for you than ecstacy” — may be innacurate.
[time]
The one-minute sunset on Bradenton Beach.
[roblimo]
Adam Sandler = Happy Gilmore Hannukah song conditioner is bettah The key to a nation’s healing.
[salon]
Dent ignoring that August ‘06 letter about the machines malfunctioning forces Washington off the schnide. (Grandma, is that how you spell schnide?)
[bh]
NBC and Rupert Murdoch are going after YouTube, which means they’re going after Google. A titanic battle that will decide, once and for all, which major corporation you will spend your life working for. Without pay, of course.
[newsweek]
What kind of privacy do female soldiers get in war zones?
[slate]
Here’s the lede, you probably don’t have to click: A 24-year-old man has been arrested, suspected of cutting the head off of a 17-year-old girl’s pet dog and leaving it at her front door in a gift-wrapped box.
[cnn]
Not sure you heard, but Bush laid out an exit strategy the other day.
[the onion]
The results are in: The PZZA field is sliced to 16.
[cl]
The 941 is that lonely kid whose mom makes him bologna sandwiches on week-old Wonder Bread which he has to eat alone in the corner of the cafeteria while all the other kids pay for their hot lunches and talk about ‘tendo and make up rumors about how The 941 picks his nose and has scabies, even though the other kids don’t even know what scabies is. Be The 941’s friend. You’ve got a moral obligation.
[myspace]

According to this story by Melinda Henneberger on Huffington Post, the manufacturer of the electronic voting machines used in the infamous District 13 race told Dent and others in Florida before the election that there may be a malfunction:

WASHINGTON - Last August, Election Systems & Software sent Florida election officials a letter informing them of a glitch in their electronic voting equipment — a problem that should be fixed before Election Day in November “to avoid any potential issues at the polls.”

Instead, the problem was ignored, said Sam Hirsch, a lawyer for Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings, who has petitioned the court and the Congress for a new election in Katherine Harris’s old district in Sarasota.

Kathy Dent, Sarasota Supervisor of Elections, confirmed in a phone interview today that the manufacturer’s recommendation was disregarded, and no action taken: “No one in the State of Florida updated” the equipment after receiving the letter, she said, “and that’s because it was too close to the election. It was a state decision that it was too late to make changes.”

Dent says the glitch had no bearing on those pesky 18,000 undervotes. Hirsch disagrees. He told Henneberger that the problem “matches the reports we got from voters.”

I spoke to Jennings a few weeks back — she’s still fighting and is convinced she’ll get a recount. If this story keeps refusing to die, she might just be right.

Just a quickie today, got a paper to put out:

: Kathy Dent fights back, with a big ol’ profile on A1. “I didn’t see a problem with our ballot,” she says now. “I still don’t.” Well, that’s one way to handle it. [ht]

: Good thing it’s not like every single vote counts. [ht]
: Why Hannah Wallace, the funniest gal over at Sarasota Magazine, doesn’t smoke. [sarasota magazine]

: “Dude. Is that what I think it is?”
“Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”
“Yup. A giant, 28-pound bag o’ weed right there on the side of the hideway.”
“Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.”
“Good thing we called the cops.”
“Crud.”
[local 6 via fark]