Posted on Tue, Sep. 10, 2002 By MARTIN MERZER, JONI JAMES AND ALFONSO CHARDY Miami Herald

Gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno stands next to her red pick-up as she waits for the polls to open because there was a delay in getting the new touch screen voting machines activated Tuesday. She was allowed into her precinct at St. Catherine of Siena Church at 7:15 a.m.

Confronted by another plague of malfunctioning voting machines and inept poll workers -- particularly in South Florida -- state officials this afternoon extended voting hours until 9 p.m. statewide for today's closely watched and closely contested primary.

The campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Janet Reno had called on Gov. Jeb Bush to extend the voting by two hours in Miami-Dade, Broward and other counties where voters experienced significant trouble.

Reno also threatened to file a lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, other politicians and officials echoed the call for extended voting hours, and Bush signed an executive order to that effect shortly after 2 p.m.

Secretary of State Jim Smith was to make the official announcement momentarily.

Most Floridians managed to cast ballots without difficulty, but voters reported problems in scores of Miami-Dade and Broward polling places as they tried -- and often failed -- to participate in the first statewide election since the 2000 presidential debacle.

Some polling places opened late due to malfunctioning touch-screen machines -- and a few precincts remained closed for many hours after the polls were to open at 7 a.m.

Poll workers had trouble activating machines because of mechanical malfunctions or poor training. In some cases, especially in Broward, precinct clerks and other key workers failed to show up, paralyzing those precincts.

Voters also reported registration problems and other confusion.

''It seems that, no matter how many assurances we get of safeguards and improvements, voting in Dade County is a lot like going to a casino,'' said U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, a Miami Democrat who had problems casting an absentee vote last week. ``You hope it will work out, but you know it's beyond your control.''

Meek said the polls should stay open ''as long as necessary to insure that every voter has the opportunity to vote.'' She also insisted that the county bring in experts to make sure the machines work by the November elections.

In the first hours after polls were supposed to open, some Broward voters were unable to cast ballots in Coral Springs, Sunrise, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines, Weston and Plantation.

Many problems also were reported in Miami Beach, Carol City, the Kendall area and other parts of Miami-Dade, where voters were turned away because the new, ATM-type machines were not working.

Even Reno was delayed in casting her vote because of machine trouble in Miami-Dade.

She arrived at her polling place in Kendall before 7 a.m. to be the first person there to cast a ballot. But at 7:05 a.m., an elections worker said the machines were still being activated, one at a time.

Groans were heard.

''I have to wait outside?'' a incredulous Reno asked poll workers.

At about 7:15 a.m., the first machine came to life and Reno voted, taking about two minutes.

''I think that it is important that the voters overcome mistakes made by others or failure to plan by others,'' the former U.S. attorney general said.

Miami-Dade election officials confirmed that problems developed in dozens of polling places, largely because poll workers had trouble booting up machines.

''Many of the polling places were not open at 7 a.m., as required by state law,'' said Gisela Salas, an assistant supervisor of elections in Miami-Dade. ``This was primarily due to the fact that a lot of the poll workers were not able to activate all the machines in time.''

She said many poll workers did not wait for the full six-minute activation procedure to occur and then became nervous and uncertain.

''A lot of the poll workers were not patient,'' Salas said.

By 10 a.m, three hours after the time when polling places were supposed to open, Salas said several stations were still experiencing problems.

''We are working on them,'' she said. ``We have troubleshooters from both the county and the [voting machine] company going out to the polling place locations to troubleshoot the difficulties.''

At the same time, though, she and other Miami-Dade officials said most of the county's 6,300 voting machines were operating properly.

Miriam Oliphant, Broward's new and already embattled election supervisor, was not granting interviews, nor was she keeping to the schedule of polling visits she had distributed to the media Monday evening.

In Tallahassee, Smith, the secretary of state, said he received a call from someone -- he did not say who -- on the Broward County Commission who told him the county did not have enough voting equipment.

He said the county commissioner said the governor should call out the National Guard to deal with any problems.

Lori Parrish, a recent critic of Oliphant, said she made that call, at around 10:30 p.m. Monday.

''There was a lot of confusion, and we didn't know what to do,'' Parrish said.

Said Smith: ``It was an overreaction, these things happen. There will be glitches, but we're going to get through them.''

He said about 15 percent of Broward precincts opened ``a bit late.''

Election supervisors had predicted some confusion in the early going. Sixty percent of the state is voting on new, ATM-style touch screens or other new equipment. About one of every three voters in Miami-Dade and Broward is voting in a new location this year.

By mid-morning, countless people voted without difficulty, but trouble reports also flowed from many corners of South Florida -- even though turnout seemed relatively light -- and some voters began drawing conclusions.

''I'm 50 years old, and in 30 years of voting, I've never seen such a thing,'' said Deborah Shipes of Northwest Miami-Dade. She said only three of 30 machines were working at her polling place at 12500 NW 13th Ave.

At Precinct 224 in Carol City, a predominantly black precinct, potential voters complained that once again they were about to be disenfranchised. The trouble: At 7 a.m., none of the 14 machines worked. Some left out of frustration.

Later in the morning, four machines were activated, but the rest remained unusable, sparking angry outbursts and sighs of frustration.

'This is a lot of bull,' said Marie Love-Jackson. ``These machines should have been tested a day before. Why weren't they?'

At Sunrise Lakes Phase I in West Broward, a mostly elderly crowd waited more than three hours to cast their ballots. Elections office clerk Sid Liss said, ``I've never seen anything like this. I've been here since 5:30 this morning, and I'm ready to blow my stack.''

He said he wasn't given a cell phone or provisional ballots -- a backup system with ballots that might or might not be accepted depending on subsequent inquiries. Neither he nor his three assistants could get the machines working properly.

''You tell Mrs. Oliphant she'd better leave for Shanghai, because she's in trouble,'' Liss said.

Liss finally was able to get one of the five machines up and running at about 10 a.m., after turning away dozens of angry voters.

''I was here at 7, I was here at 8, I was here at 9 and now I'm going to the doctor's,'' said would-be voter Sylvia Shore.

About 10 people were in line at about 10:15 a.m., waiting to use the single working machine.

Sandy Taubenkimel, 64, of Pembroke Pines, encountered malfunctioning machines at a precinct at 12520 Pines Blvd.

''It's very disheartening because we pay taxes, and we want this system to function at least reasonably,'' he said. `It's wonderful to have this high-tech equipment, but if it doesn't work, what's the point? It's a sad feeling.''

Lori Sugg was turned away from precinct 37X-1 in Pembroke Pines after the precinct clerk and assistant clerk failed to show up -- and no one else from the county picked up the registration book, authorization-to-vote slips or activators for the touch-screen equipment.

A Department of Justice poll watcher made a list of voters who were turned away.

''How could this happen after what happened [in 2000]?'' Sugg said. ``I don't understand.''

Nine of 16 voting machines were not working at 8:30 a.m. at the Perrine Peters United Methodist Church voting precinct in Perrine. One malfunctioning machine issued a constant whine in the corner as about a dozen people waited for an empty booth.

Confronted by so many problems, disappointed with their first encounter with a new voting system, many people called and e-mailed local newspapers and other media to complain and vent their anger.

''This is outrageous,'' said Pauline Winick of Miami Beach. ``After being so embarrassed by Florida's voting scandal [in 2000], you would have thought that they'd do better than this.''

She said none of the machines were working in precinct 25 on 54th Street and Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. Many voters were turned away; some finally were allowed to cast votes on a provisional, standby machine assigned to another precinct based in the same location.

''Those of us in precinct 25 have been disenfranchised at the moment because we cannot vote,'' said Winick, associate vice president of marketing for Florida International University and a former executive vice president of the Miami Heat.

``They say they are having technical problems, but no one is taking responsibility for them. And they are treating us like we are morons.''

At precinct 12V in Hollywood Central Elementary School, only two of five precinct workers showed up, and the precinct was being run by a new worker. A high proportion of people had to use provisional ballots because they didn't have their new voter cards.

Some older voters seemed confused by the touch screens, monopolizing the time of the one ballot activator, but the voting equipment itself worked well.

In Broward, Ilene Sager said her new registration card did not include an address for her new polling place, and when she finally found it -- at the South Florida State Hospital on University Drive near Pembroke Road -- the machines were not working.

''I was there at 8:20 a.m. and the [poll worker] yelled at me,'' she said. ``He said, `You have to wait. They're still setting up the machines. You don't like it, you can leave.''

How many other voters were waiting there?

''None,'' she said. ``No one else could find the place.''

As the primary approached, Oliphant, Broward's new election supervisor, had seemed overwhelmed by her job -- and the events of this morning did little to reverse that impression.

''What do I think about her efforts?'' Sager said. ``I think they're non-existent. What ability? I don't see that she has any ability. And if I can't vote, I can't change things.''

Even before the election, Oliphant had been criticized for confusion that surrounded the recruiting of poll workers, the selection of polling places, the duplicate mailing of voting cards to some residents and other apparent missteps.

Broward has the state's largest number of registered voters -- 960,634, though many didn't participate in the primary -- and pre-election planning was complicated by new machinery and redistricting that mandated many reassignments of polling places.

But supervisors in other counties faced similar hurdles, and seemed to take them in better stride.

In Palm Beach County, home to the controversial butterfly ballot that might have cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency two years ago, some minor glitches were reported but most the balloting unfolded without difficulty.

In North Florida's Gadsden County, which had the state's highest percentage of rejected ballots in 2000 -- 11.5 percent -- new ballot-reading optical scanners drew early praise from voters.

''It was easy to me,'' said Edith Washington, 73, the first voter in line Tuesday morning at Precinct One in Quincy. ``It was simple enough.''

This year, Gadsden voters made their choices by filling in circles on a paper ballot which was then fed into the scanner. The machine instantly rejected any irregular ballot -- such as those containing more than one vote in any race, but the glitches seemed minor.

School board candidate Judge B. Helms's ballot was initially kicked out. 'When [the scanner] first processed it, it said, `sheet too long,' '' Helms said.

A poll worker directed Helms to detach the ragged bottom edge of the ballot and put it back through. This time, the machine accepted Helms' ballot, and a read-out that tabulates the number of voters clicked from 37 to 38.

''I guess it counted,'' Helms said.

Many South Florida voters were far less fortunate.

In Broward, polls for one precinct did not open until after 9 a.m. at Topeekeegee Yugnee Park in Hollywood, where voters said they were told that poll workers didn't have the equipment they needed to activate the new touch-screen machines.

Democrat Leonard Weiss arrived at 6:45 a.m., but left in disgust at 8:30 a.m.

''They informed us that the information wasn't there, they didn't have the voter rolls or the keys to activate the machines,'' he said. ``They told us that they were on their way, and they've been on their way ever since then, and they were still on their way.

``I tried, but I have to go to work now.''

Richard Krakow, a 63-year-old pharmacist, finally emerged from that polling place at 9:40 a.m., after waiting an hour. ''That's nothing,'' he said. ``There have been people here since 7 a.m.

``The state of Florida already got one black eye. They don't need another.''

Voters and candidates reported non-functioning machines at Pine Island Community Center in Davie, a Broward Sheriff's Office substation in Weston, and at Fire Station No. 55 in Weston, along with Sunrise Lakes Phase I in Sunrise.

In Plantation, the polling place at Central Park Elementary opened about 20 minutes late, after several disappointed voters had left.

''One machine just wouldn't cooperate, but eventually we got it working,'' said poll worker Joyce Scherzer.

''The one responsible in the end is the elections supervisor, Oliphant. She carries the burden. There's really no excuse for it. They should have had everything ready,'' Weiss said.

In Pembroke Pines, five workers at precinct 37x-1, including three first-time poll workers, tried to explain to voters why they still couldn't vote at 8 a.m., an hour after the polls opened.

Without precinct clerks, registration books and activators, the place was paralyzed.

''Nobody is more upset than we are,'' said Jacquelyn Simone, a first-time poll worker. ``We all went to our class, and it looked like everything was going to go smoothly.''

It did not.

Herald staff writers Anne Bartlett, Erika Bolstad, Lesley Clark, Wanda DeMarzo, Steve Harrison, Sonji Jacobs, Joni James, Marjie Lambert, Brad Lehman, Kathy Martin, Beth Reinhard, Andrea Robinson, Robert L. Steinback, Linda Streitfeld, Nicole White and Luisa Yanez contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 10, 2002

Answers

sheesh! We voted when Chubby Hubby got home from work. What punch button machines? We were handed a paper and a felt tip pen. You filled in the 0 with ink. Then you took your sheet of paper and fed it into a machine that looked like a copy/fax machine. A computer read it and tonight when the voting was over, all they do is pull the memory card and send it into the court house. I thought that worked good. No one was having any problems that I saw. I was just p'oed because they didn't indicate who were incumbants. I was determined that I was not voting for any county commissioner that was an incumbant because they ran Walmart out from building a regional distribution center. It would have provided 1500 jobs. The county said they didn't want them because Walmart only paid $8 to $10 per hour. But the county pays $7/hour. This county needs those low paying jobs for the people without education who are out there shoveling horse pucky for minimum wage. I am serious...horses are a 3.1 billion dollar industry in this area. All those uneducated blacks that are working the barns would run over to Walmart and learn a skill and get paid better and be able to dress in clean clothes. Sheeesh!

Taz

-- Anonymous, September 10, 2002

I'd love it if the winner of Reno-McBride finally emerges after a bitterly contested process lasting many days. Laugh riot!

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

You and me both, Peter. LOL

I was surprised to learn about all the hassles people were having. My precinct was running smoothly. No waiting, no problems. it was easy, and so was the machine.

It was amazing to hear about Broward county's closing the polls early, even though all were told of the gov'ner's order to extend two hours.

I'm sure there will be much flotsam to wade thru in the coming weeks.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

I think you should just have a contest along the lines of "Fear Factor" or whatever that show is called where the boobs do things like let live rats crawl all over them or eat worms.

You should have something like that for your elections. The candidate who can successfully do amazing feats, including balance a budget without resorting to drug money, wins!

It would be a lot more entertaining than watching Reno dance . . .

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

Well, you can all be sure that those that were disenfranchised will be very loud in the coming days.

From the things i heard, poll workers not showing up, those that did not remembering how to set up the machines, not having the necessary back up paper ballots, and on and on, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they decided to do the whole election over.

One can expect some difficulties with new machinery, but it all should have been dealt with in a practice run prior to the day of voting.

I wonder if any of those poll workers were in collusion to set up the election day for failure. Definitely something to look into.

I learned something about a co-worker last night. She always seemed to be intelligent, and yet she had been suckered in by the group responsible for the repeal vote on Dade's rights amendment against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I mean really, she was using all the same exact [and wrong] words that they have been using in their ads. Tried to explain it to her, but she was too far gone.

The amendment covers everyone. It does not say any specific orientation. funny that they don't realize that.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

Barefoot, I think there are a fair number of individuals in the gene pool who are none too bright to begin with, and then they either live or move somewhere where the sun shines a lot (TX also has this problem), and the heat fries the rest of their brain cells. Look at the newspaper articles: where do the people live who seem to do the stupidest things? More often than not, it's a state that receives a lot of sunshine and heat.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

Oy! Sweetie's from Texas! Oh--but so is my MIL, lol!

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002