Elections are scarier than a terrorist threat

MORGAN

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 14, 2002

Once again we get a civics lesson -- at our expense.

With the Florida election under a microscope for obvious reasons, officials in Miami and Fort Lauderdale have gone over the edge this time.

Could we look more stupid?

Years ago I covered a judge who frequently took judicial notice of the Dade County exception to life.

The lawyer who stood before him and cited a Dade County legal precedent was in instant trouble. The court didn't recognize anything decided in Dade County. Changing the name to Miami-Dade hasn't helped. It's still the same place.

This week Secretary of State Jim Smith was citing the Miami-Dade and Broward exception to normal elections.

Sixty-five Florida counties got it right. Two flunked the test. Unfortunately the two counties that flunked have almost 2-million voters.

Legislators have often joked about cutting a ditch around the area and floating it off into the ocean. Earlier this year Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, suggested we give Miami-Dade to Congress and make it the 17th largest state in the union.

On Friday, Rep. Jerry Melvin, R-Fort Walton Beach, said there is so much corruption in Dade County that the state should take over the entire government.

"We in Florida cannot continue to stand by and let Dade and Broward (and sometimes Palm Beach) counties make us the laughing stock of the entire world," Melvin said.

Rep. Marco Rubio, D-Coral Gables, fired back with a letter noting that four of the five county commissioners in Escambia County were recently thrown out of office and charged with crimes.

Melvin, in a letter to the governor, suggested the problems in South Florida are caused by a society steeped in Haitian and Cuban ways. Rubio responded by noting the greatness of a country where "people like you can spew all the hatred they want without going to jail."

Democrats are blaming Gov. Jeb Bush.

The Republicans are suggesting that the Democrats knew trouble was coming in those South Florida counties and let it happen because they wanted Tampa lawyer Bill McBride to win.

Once again there is probably enough blame in this situation to go around.

Few people realize how much control is in the hands of the 67 people who serve as elections supervisors. When we elect judges, we require that they at least have law degrees and a certain amount of experience. There is no such requirement for elections supervisors.

In some counties, poll workers got as many as 12 hours training on the new equipment. In Broward County, they got two hours. That alone could spell the difference.

The latest debacle is leading some officials to suggest a more centralized voting system that would not be so dependent on the abilities of each county's elections supervisor. Secretary of State Jim Smith isn't ready to go that far -- yet. He fears there might be unintended consequences from it.

But it is clear something has to be done. Something dramatic.

Floridians who show up at the polls should certainly be able to vote and walk away with the belief that their vote would actually be counted.

If this wasn't so tragic, it would be funny.

Somehow it seemed fitting that we would be juggling this election uproar around now-disproved reports of a terrorist plot to destroy something in Miami, a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, all happening on Friday the 13th.

As if to prove my point, Tim Moore, director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, was asked Friday at the end of a news conference on the alleged terrorists if he had also been asked to help unscramble the state's election problems.

"No," Moore told reporters. "I'd rather work with terrorists than the supervisors of elections."

Such a wonderful state. Where else could all these things get blended together into the great stew that comes out in your daily newspaper every day?

At least we can't ever complain that life in Florida is dull.

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