Elections Supervisor: Miami-Dade vote totals won't be tallied until Thursday

[flpoljunkie]

Source: Miami Herald

Elections supervisor: Miami-Dade vote totals won’t be tallied until Thursday

BY JAY WEAVER AND DAVID OVALLE
[e-mail]

Don’t expect election results from Miami-Dade County anytime soon.

The county’s beleaguered elections supervisor told reporters Wednesday night that her employees, still processing thousands of absentee ballots, won’t finish until Thursday.

Supervisor Penelope Townsley acknowledged that mistakes had been made in the elections process, according to Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS4. She spoke after another day during which elections workers fed thousands of pages of ballots into scanning machines.

With the presidential race settled — but Florida still too close to call — Miami-Dade’s lack of final results have left a much-mocked blank spot on the long-decided electoral map.

Earlier Wednesday, the county had said 20,000 absentee ballots still needed to be counted. The office of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued a news release insisting that the “unprecedented length of the ballot” represents “over 100,000 pages that need to be reviewed and verified, one by one.”

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/07/3085779/some-20000-absentee-ballots-left.html#storylink=cpy

[Ineeda]

1. Cheese and rice.

As a Massachusetts born and bred now-Floridian, it's humiliating.

[flamingdem]

2. It does look bad!

And has to be fixed, we'll see if anyone makes a move to do that with Rick Scott vulching around

[pimpbot]

3. Why didn't they start counting when the received the ballots

The had to know how many ballots they sent out, thus knowing approximately how many would be returned. Does their scanning machine only work after the polls close? Is there only one person trained to operate the scan-o-matic? How come no other counties are having this issue?

[quaker bill]

5. The damn ballot was so long

that it takes a minute or so to scan each one through the machine. (That was +/-how long it took to scan mine at the polls) 20,000 minutes is a long time. I expect that they are using several scanners. You are correct, it seems that they could have got going earlier, and perhaps they did. 20K absentees is a pretty low number for Miami Dade. I expect that they received well north of 100K of them in total. We had most if not all of that many here in a large but much smaller county. Ours were already counted by poll closing, I am guessing they started early here.

[CreekDog]

8. I'm okay with that part --I don't want anyone in Florida opening ballots too soon

[horsedoc]

4. Heads need to roll

The long lines and now this, absolutely unacceptable. Imagine the uproar if everything was waiting on FL like in 2000!!!

[flpoljunkie]

6. No, we need to throw the Republicans out of Tallahassee

They are the ones who made the ballot so long with 11 unnecessary amendments to our state Constitution. Most we're bad, all were unnecessary.

[davidpdx]

7. Exactly

And I'd prefer it be done in public with a guillotine. Making people wait 5-6 hours to vote is ridiculous. States should have any future funds yanked for voting assistance if they don't meet strict standards (example a minimum 2 hour wait). Then the state can figure out how to come up with the extra funds.

[silvershadow]

9. They look the fools they are. Proving a defacto case for those who had to stand in those ridiculous

lines. The whole nation waits because some dickheads decided to play politics. Why isn't that guy in jail, anyway, instead of running a state? Wasn't he involved in some kind of fraud?

[davidwparker]

10. What is taking so long? It's like they are trying to hide something. n/t

[yellowcanine]

11. You would think at some point Florida voters would crack some heads for this gross

incompetence. Besides limiting ballot length (can't someone figure out that if the ballot is longer it is going to take people more time to vote?), they need to add voting locations and machines in areas where there have been long lines historically. And there is absolutely no reason why the number of ballot questions can't be limited, particularly in Presidential election years. And if the damn legislature and governor would do their job they would not need so many ballot questions. Why even have a legislature if every important decision is going to be made by ballot questions?