fucking bush. fucking florida. fucking fuck.

i didn't want to kill the blog in case something good came up. as it happens, something came up, though certainly not good.

below is the text of a letter i sent to the florida ACLU. it should explain itself.

i. hate. florida. today.

*************************************

November 2, 2004

XXX X. XXXX
Legal Director
American Civil Liberties Union of Florida
Blah Blah Blah
Miami, FL ZIP

CC: XXX XXXX

Dear Mr. XXXX:

I would like to document for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU-FL) my recent experience in attempting to vote as a resident of the state of Florida by absentee ballot.

In August 2004, I requested an absentee ballot from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department by mailing in a completed Absentee Ballot Request Form. In September 2004, I received confirmation of the Department’s receipt of my request (letter dated September 1, 2004). They informed me that the signature on my request form did not match the signature that they had on file from my initial voter registration. I called the Elections Department to ask what I should do next. I was requested to complete a new voter registration form and mail it to the Department with a new completed Absentee Ballot Request Form. I did so shortly thereafter, not later than September 17, 2004.

Early during the week of October 18, 2004, I called the Elections Department to check on the status of my absentee ballot. I was informed that I would be receiving the ballot “any day.” I did not ask what day the ballot had been mailed, and the person I spoke with did not volunteer the information.

On October 26, 2004, I had not yet received my ballot. I called the Elections Department. The person I spoke with told me that the ballot had been mailed on October 16, 2004. I was nervous that it had been lost. Because the Department had recorded the ballot as sent, they needed to receive another Absentee Ballot Request Form in order to mail a new ballot. The Department employee I spoke with instructed me to send the form so that it would arrive by the absentee ballot request deadline, October 29, 2004. I mailed a new Request Form that day (October 26, 2004) by USPS Priority Mail so it would arrive in 2-3 days.

On the morning of October 29, 2004, I called the Elections Department to confirm that my request had been received. The employee I spoke with confirmed that my request had indeed reached the office. I asked him when they would be mailing out the ballot, and he said that they would be sent out “later today or tomorrow.” I thought it was odd that the Department would allow only one business day for absentee ballots to reach voters outside the state of Florida. I asked whether the Department could send the ballot by Express mail so it would be sure to reach me by Tuesday. He said it could not. I offered to pay for the cost of the Express shipping, but I was told that wouldn’t be possible. The Department could not guarantee that I would receive my ballot before November 2, even though they had record of receiving my first request in August. I was exasperated.

On advice from a friend, I called the MoveOn.org Voter Helpline. The volunteer I spoke with, while sympathetic, could only offer the phone number for the Florida Department of State Division of Elections (DOE) as help.

When I called the DOE, I was told that ballots are administered on the county level only. I was given the phone number for the Florida Election Commission and recommended to file a complaint. The woman I spoke with also urged me to again call the County Elections Department and ask again whether it would be possible to send the absentee ballot by Express mail.

For the fourth time that month, I called the Miami-Dade County Elections Department. The person that I spoke with on this occasion asked if I could physically go to the polls to vote on Election Day. I asked him whether it wasn’t presumptuous to ask someone who had requested an absentee ballot three times to take an emergency flight home to vote at the polls. Once he understood my situation, he spoke with a supervisor and then transferred me to her. She eventually agreed to send the ballot to me by Express mail on the condition that I send it back to the Department by Express mail as well. I was relieved, and I agreed.

On Monday, the ballot had not yet arrived. I called ACLU-FL and discussed my situation with Courtenay Strickland. Until this point, I was under the mistaken impression that domestic absentee ballots followed the same deadline schedule as overseas ballots. I believed that my ballot would be valid and counted if it were postmarked on Election Day, November 2, 2004; rather, as I discovered, domestic absentee ballots must be received at the County Elections Department office on or before 7:00PM on Election Day. I realized that, in order to submit a valid vote, I would have to receive the absentee ballot from the Department that day and send it back by next-day Express mail so that it would reach the office in time to be counted. Ms. Strickland advised that, if I were to receive the ballot on Tuesday, I should fill it out and send it in, even if it would be arriving late.

Unfortunately, I did not receive the absentee ballot until Tuesday, November 2, 2004. The Federal Express envelope showed that the ballot had been mailed on Friday, October 29, 2004, to arrive the next business morning (Monday, November 1, 2004). However, the package was not delivered to our mailroom until November 2.


This situation brings up a number of issues that logic would demand be addressed:

1. The lag time between the ballot request and the shipment of the ballot by the Department.

After I requested an absentee ballot with a corrected registration, one month passed before the Department claims a ballot was sent. Even allowing for extra time required to process the new registration, one month seems like an excessive waiting period. Given that a new registration requires 29 days to process (less than one month), a simple change to an existing registration ought perhaps to take less time.

2. The disappearance of absentee ballots in shipping from the Department to the voter.

Although the Department has record of sending an absentee ballot to my correct address on October 16, 2004, that ballot has not yet arrived. In an isolated case among thousands of shipments, such a disappearance may be overlooked as a fluke of the postal system. However, accounts of nearly 60,000 absentee ballots that have gone missing between the hands of the Department and the hands of the voters in just one county point away from simple coincidence. Safeguards are needed to protect against lapses of this magnitude, be they caused by simple human error or deliberate negligence.

3. The proximity of the absentee ballot request deadline to the submission deadline.

The Absentee Ballot Request Form states that requests must be received by the Department of Elections no later than four (4) calendar days before the election. Election Day is always on Tuesday; therefore, subtracting four calendar days always gives the previous Friday. As evidenced in this case, faultless and expensive mailing though an Express carrier is required for a voter to receive and submit a valid absentee ballot if his request is received by the Department on the request deadline: the ballot must be mailed by overnight Express mail to arrive on the following Monday; the voter must fill out the ballot and return it by overnight Express mail to arrive on Election Day Tuesday. While no one is recommending that voters wait until the deadline to request ballots, it is not absurd to expect the Department to be able to guarantee that a voter who requests a ballot on or before the deadline will have a reasonable amount of time to return the ballot so that it may be counted.

Overseas ballots are accepted up to ten (10) days after Election Day if the ballot envelope is postmarked on Election Day. If the intent of having a system of absentee voting is to allow as many residents as possible to participate in the electoral process, shouldn’t it be reflected in the regulation of domestic absentee ballots as well?

It is also of note that the Miami-Dade County Elections Department seems not to have a policy of sending ballots by Express mail. In fact, even in my extreme situation, the first two people I spoke with in the Department on this matter were convinced that they could not send me a ballot by Express mail. Neither could answer the question of what should be done if I received the ballot after Election Day.

4. The lack of a contingency plan in the case of errors by the County Elections Department.

In my conversation with the DOE, I was told that ballots are distributed only through the county level. Indeed, very little – if any – oversight exists throughout the absentee voting process. When presented with obstacles at the county level, the voter has no recourse outside of filing a complaint with the Florida Election Commission or contacting third-party groups such as the ACLU-FL; these complaints can often have no impact until after the Election is completed, if then. Too heavy a burden is placed on the voter when, without hope of appealing to a higher authority, he must make six separate calls to the Department in order to receive one late absentee ballot.


I have mailed in my absentee ballot even though it is clear that it will not reach the Department offices before 7:00PM today. I can only hope that, based on the gross failures documented in this year’s voting process, the ACLU-FL’s challenge to the domestic absentee ballot deadline will be successful and my vote, along with the votes of thousands of others, will count.


Sincerely,

Sai Jahann