Long delays leave some black voters angry and suspicious--After computer foul-ups, leaders see echoes of 2000

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Posted on Wed, Sep. 11, 2002 BY ANDREA ROBINSON arobinson@herald.com

South Florida's black community, still struggling to heal from the disputed 2000 presidential election, demanded answers Tuesday for the ''unconscionable'' screw-ups that caused voters in some of their precincts to wait hours before casting ballots.

The snafus -- which some leaders predicted last week -- caused an angry state NAACP President Adora Obi Nweze to call for the removal of some county elections supervisors, in particular Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor David Leahy.

''Somebody else needs to be put into that job,'' Nweze said late Tuesday. ``People ought to have had an opportunity to vote, both black and white. They haven't had that opportunity in South Florida. When do we stop this shell game?''

State Sen. Kendrick Meek, who canvassed North Dade polls earlier in the day, said Leahy should resign and County Manager Steve Shiver should ``get someone who can run the elections. . . . What happened is unconscionable.''

State and national black leaders said it was too early to tell if blacks were disproportionately disenfranchised, but they charged that neither the state nor the counties had ensured voters that their rights were safe.

WORST CASE

The worst was seen at Precinct 507 in Liberty City's Thena C. Crowder Elementary, where the voting machines sputtered to a start in the morning, then crashed until mid-afternoon.

There are 1,200 registered voters in the precinct, which is 90 percent Democrat and 95 percent black.

Many walked away angry and suspicious after their first attempt to vote failed.

''Voting in Miami-Dade reminds me of being in a third-world country,'' said retired teacher Wilhelmenia Jennings, 85, who came to vote with her 92-year-old sister, Witlean Butler. Both were turned away.

Emotions in black neighborhoods were high early Tuesday. Gospel radio station WMBM 1490-AM was flooded with alerts from Broward and Miami-Dade voters shortly after the 7 a.m. precinct openings.

Former Miami City Commissioner Athalie Range was among an estimated 500 angry voters who waited at Precinct 511, Jordan Grove Baptist Church in Liberty City. Computer glitches forced it shut until after noon. As the delay continued, talk of conspiracy against black voters grew.

By 12:30, only two of the machines worked. Some voters, including 86-year-old Range, were trapped in an afternoon downpour.

''One of [the poll workers] said the batteries were put in wrong. That's no excuse,'' Range said. ``I expected that things would go relatively smoothly. I expected a glitch or two but not a precinct down for several hours with no relief in sight.''

Criticism also poured in from the NAACP and the People for the American Way, which set up a project to monitor six largely minority precincts in Broward that experienced widespread problems in the November 2000 elections. No monitoring information on those precincts was available late Tuesday.

''This doesn't have to happen,'' said Vicki Beasely, a lawyer who has monitored elections in Virginia and New Jersey with the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. ``The job of an elections supervisor is to anticipate these problems and solve them.''

EARLY INDICATION

As early as last week, black community leaders had predicted problems would crop up, after U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek was turned away from casting an absentee ballot because of a computer malfunction at a Miami library branch. Some would-be voters left in frustration, but Meek called Leahy, who verified her information with poll workers so she could vote.

On Tuesday, Meek criticized Miami-Dade's process.

``I had hoped that the problems I had experienced . . . when I went to vote -- inoperable computers and backup systems that fail -- had been corrected, but the mess that has been reported this morning in dozens of Dade precincts shows that Dade's voting system is just as broken as ever.''

The incident involving Meek occured on the same day that the state settled a federal voting rights lawsuit. That lawsuit, filed by the NAACP and four other civil rights groups, alleged top elections officials, the departments of Children & Families and Motor Vehicles and Highway Safety and seven counties -- including Miami-Dade, Broward and Duval -- had disenfranchised scores of black voters during the Nov. 7, 2000, election that put George W. Bush into the White House.

The state agreed -- among other things -- to develop uniform, statewide poll worker training and voter education standards.

Staff writers Luisa Yanez, Jennifer Maloney and Erika Bolstad contributed to this report.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

Answers

Are we not talking about Democrats screwing these black voters, rather than vile nasty Republicans?

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

Oh, you KNOW they'll find a way to blame it on the repubs!

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2002

I had no problems. Our precinct was just as orderly and efficient as last time. Hmmm, last time, that would be 2000, wouldn't it? yeah, we managed to vote correctly then, too.

The pollworkers are from those areas, ya know. It isn't like they were bussed in to do the work. You can only do so much with the intelligence level of the worker.

Of course, there are some who are suggesting that Olliphant, the Broward super of elections, should resign. She says the voters have faith in her. You think we should let the people vote on that?

It is a shame they didn't do a practice run the month before.

Or was this the practice run for November?

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2002


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