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| Rick Scott Watch at the Brevard Legislative Delegation 12/12/12 |
Dear Brevard Legislative County Delegation and Madam
Supervisor
I wanted to answer some of the points that were made and
bring up some points that were glossed over regarding elections in Viera on
Wednesday Dec. 12. 2012
* Miami-Dade: Senator Gardiner seemed to imply that once the
Miami-Dade situation is all worked out, everything will be fine with regard to
early voting and long lines. Of course this isn't true, and I suspect the
senator is well aware of his overstatement of the case. There were problems
with early voting and long lines on election day reported all over the state.
Three of the counties I mentioned in the information I provided you saw massive
lines which were exacerbated -as I said - by Machiavellian power outages and
scanner failures. In the case of Tampa Bay counties, as though the advent of
rain and a tiny bit of thunder, were a novelty to the office of elections
supervisor, and churches in African American polling precincts.
Keeping with the Miami-Dade problem here. MSNBC ran numerous
stories leading up to the election relative to the lines we should expect in
Florida owing to the ballot size. Rachel Maddow specifically mentioned Miami
Dade was expecting an 11 page ballot because of
local amendments added to the bar exam we all took. How then is this a
"surprise" in hindsight, now to be dealt with? Are we saying Rachel
Maddow is more qualified to run our elections? She saw this coming and the
State Division of Elections, the Secretary of State and the Legislature had no
idea? Is not the division perfectly aware of where the bottle necks are likely
to develop? If not, what need have we of this organization? Is every county
"on it's own" when it comes to planning for such an election?
*Mr. Gardiner said "I suspect the legislature is being
blamed for that" Yes. It is. And with good reason. As I said, the
legislature counted on it, banked on it. Plotted for it behind closed doors, to
hear former Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer in the newspapers. And the
evidence that this is so, is in the very record of the legislature Mr Gardiner
wishes to absolve with this blase summation. As I said, quoting Sen. Mike
Bennett as HB 1355 was being discussed in May 2011, "I want them to work
for it" he said, during a time purges and ballot amendments were being
discussed. Losing track of space and time, whisking himself back to the Florida
of the colored and white bathrooms in the 1950s, Mr. Bennett went further and said "I
want them to walk across town for it." There is very little doubt in the
context (in that he specifically mentioned Africa) who his dog whistle was
aimed at. African American voters. As a democrat when I see my fellow democrats
having their opportunities their franchise removed, revoked on the basis of
shady evidence, when I see the wheels of social engineering attempting, with
great cynicism, to remove them from the lines, I get outraged, for there goes
my vote as well.
Back to the Miami situation: Does the division not know how
many early voting locations will be open? Does the legislature not know the
ballot will be translated into Spanish for south Florida voters? Of course it
does on both counts. In past elections, amendments often had an abstract of
each bill, not the entire bill on the ballot. Not in 2012. Ms. Scott said it
herself, it takes one quarter of an hour just to read the ballot let alone
understand the amendments. Furthermore the ballot is written in such cumbersome
legalese even attorneys from the ACLU had trouble decrypting it; before we
hot-walk the tired excuse that "people didn't study it ahead of
time". Here is a single sentence from amendment No. 5 (where the
legislature thoughtull plotted, schemed, cannived, conspired and hoped we would
put the judiciary beneath the power of a 2/3rds majority house and senate) it
reads, in 9 point typeface:
"This proposed constitutional revision eliminates the
requirement that a general law repealing a court rule pass by a two-thirds vote
of each house of the Legislature that expresses the policy behind the
repeal."
This amendment alone had 400+ words, densely packed, in tiny
print. Ms. Scott was good to point out there was a six page ballot. She didn't
mention how packed it was. No one on the board mentioned or questioned the need
to ram all of these amendments on this test paper/ballot. If you let others do
your voting for you, you lost rights to a third branch of government, or
allowed people to take your tax money and put it toward religious schools.
You legislators all seemed resigned/mildly surprised by the
ballot's size as well, as though you yourselves weren't the authors of it. How
can this be? (We also must question the efficacy of reducing assessments on
dwindling property values as we allegedly seek to "balance the
budget" particularly when the starvation is always meted out to education
and healthcare services.)
Never once are the failures of the voting machines which
result in mystery rescannings, ever mentioned by yourselves or our SOE, Ms.
Scott. I gave you several examples including a study, and even letters from the
voting machine company "Dominion" that has screwed up elections in
Volusia, Hillsborough and now St. Lucie county by failure to properly code the
memory cards. There never seems to be a call to remove this brand from the
state despite its poor record of service. Verily, as though officials depend on
these errors for nefarious purposes of election rigging. The unspoken secret,
elections officials never utter the name of the machines in public. (Taboo,
children; it's taboo.)
Ms. Scott mentions she has 385,000 voters. Good statistic.
It is great to have the luxury of having relatively few voters. Thus, the
budget likely meets the needs of her office. Other counties aren't so
fortunate. Voters shouldn't suffer for this. Nor, frankly, should Ms. Scott be
given such high praise relative to other failures around the state when we are
talking about a county that has mostly one party, republican. She doesn't have
to worry about the obvious rigging, malfeasance and failures happening through
other elections offices. It is also disingenuous to ask her if she feels 8 days
are enough. Brevard with only 385k voters would not be a meaningful data point
to make that case, "that eight is enough".
Nearly half of the states in the nation have early voting.
We have 18 million people in Florida. We need early voting. We need to expand
the number of days, not subtract from it.
Senator Altman's harping on this issue of "legal
voting" is also like Tammany Hall petty-foggery of an earlier era. We
don't HAVE a problem with this issue, when matched against the tens of
thousands of votes that are tainted with the rescannings all over the state.
This is only a start on the myriad of issues which are of
major concern to those of us who plainly see what will wash out to be a white
wash of the problems in our election systems unless you officials actually
start being honest with yourselves and the voters.
Thank you
David A. Kearns
Election Integrity Advocate
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