Been to half a dozen polling places: initial impressions only.
- Turnout is huge. Poll workers are estimating between fifteen and twenty-five percent more voters than 2000. Minimum lines are 45 minutes, up to about 1 hour 45 minutes--and almost no one is leaving. This is great in Lee county. Not so if also on Florida's east coast or other traditional Dem jurisdictions. I don't know how that plays out in the rain--i.e., in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
- The GOTV effort at Ft. Myers Republican HQ is huge as well. Three dozen phone lines. Dozens of drivers. This is politics, one vote at a time.
- Fraud is minimal or absent. No alarming reports of bussing in and voting for disabled. A few isolated cases of violations of the rule prohibiting electioneering within 50 feet of a polling station (some Dems, some Rs); all swiftly and politely remedied.
- The Dem lawyers were smart. They're all sporting stickers saying "Florida Legal Team"--without any identification with Kerry or the Democratic Party. So voters with questions are getting Democrat legal advice under the misapprehension that it's neutral. Indeed, because the sticker does not identify party or candidate, Democratic poll watchers wear the stickers even inside the poling stations. Our watchers are plainly identified as Republicans. But Florida law doesn't require poll watchers to identify their party other than to the head election official at the polling station. Florida Election Code, Section 101.131. I wish I'd thought of it too.
- Finally, I've already seen evidence of the inadvisability of the touchscreen voting machines, that don't create a paper record, as we have in Lee county. At a precinct I visited this morning, one machine failed--as did its battery back-up. Poll officials say they called a repair technician, who--somehow--recovered the pre-existing tally. By magic maybe? I've not challenged--it's in a precinct expected to vote Dem. . .
[Series continues here]
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