Thursday, October 28, 2004
The Theft of Florida
Thousands of absentee ballots are missing
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Thousands of absentee ballots are missing
Broward County's election office is resending about 76,000 absentee ballots to voters who say they asked for but still haven't received them, an ominous sign of voting problems just days before the nation again sets its eyes on Florida.
The elections office is still trying to discover why so many people haven't received the absentee ballots. But with so little time before Tuesday's election, officials will mail out replacements -- thousands of them -- today. The ballots will be shipped via overnight mail to people outside the county, said Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.
Broward's mix-up is the most profound, but not the only, glitch in the absentee voter process across Florida. From teenagers away at school to homeowners away on travel, complaints are mounting that absentee ballots have somehow been lost between here and there. Voters in Palm Beach County have reported similar problems.
In Broward, the ballots will go to every voter who requested one but who has not yet returned the original ballot, Snipes said. More than 50,800 of the 127,320 people who asked for absentee ballots have returned them. The rest will get new ballots.
''We're going to give voters the benefit of the doubt,'' Snipes said. ``This isn't a blame game. What we're concentrating on is getting the ballots to the voter.''
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement -- at Snipes' request -- launched an investigation Tuesday, but found no evidence of criminal intent, said Paige Patterson-Hughes, spokeswoman for the agency's South Florida region.
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