Officials ready for swarm of early voters

With two more new sites for early voting, elections chief Buddy Johnson hopes the balloting runs smoothly.

TAMPA - Hillsborough Elections Chief Buddy Johnson has added sites, tested the touch screen machines and trained the poll workers to be ready today for what is expected to be a record-breaking early vote.

Johnson may also be wiping his brow and saying a prayer that things go better than the last early voting session, in August, when 245 votes were lost because of an employee's oversight.

"I would not be surprised if we see 50,000 voters for early voting," said Johnson, a former state legislator and Republican appointed to the elections supervisor's job last year. As for the 245-vote problem: "We have set up new security procedures, and I don't see how anything can get around them."

Johnson's triple push for new voter registrations, expanded early voting sites and safer tabulation standards all come together today, with the early voting period starting at 8 a.m. at elections office sites and 10 a.m. at regional library sites. For a complete list of early voting sites and their hours, see Johnson's Web site at www.votehillsborough.org or call 813 272-5850.

For the convenience of voters and to shorten lines Nov. 2, Johnson has aggressively expanded early voting, going from six sites for the March 9 presidential primary to nine sites for the Aug. 31 primary to 11 for the general election.

Johnson said he has worked to outpace other counties with sites per registered voters. Pinellas and Orange counties have nine early voting sites each. Palm Beach has eight and Duval has just one.

Hillsborough's two new sites, set up to serve voters near the inner city and in southeast Hillsborough are at the Robert W. Saunders Library at 1505 Nebraska Ave. and the Ruskin Library at 1 Dickman Drive SE.

About 12,000 voters cast ballots at early voting sites in Hillsborough County in the Aug. 31 primary. Johnson expects that number could quadruple because of increased registrations, availability of new sites, greater awareness of early voting and heightened interest in therace for the presidency.

A deluge of new registrations - more than 20,000 - flooded into Johnson's office at the close of registration Oct. 4. The elections staff and a score of temporary employees were working overtime this past weekend to process all the new registrations by the start of early voting.

Elections officials said Sunday that about 3,500 registrations remained unprocessed at the end of the day.

If new voters attempt to vote early and their registrations have not yet been entered into elections computers, Johnson has instructed his staff to search through stacks of envelopes at the downtown elections office to try to locate the unprocessed registrations.

As a last resort, Johnson said a voter whose registration cannot be located would be offered the opportunity to file a provisional ballot.

Elections officials must investigate data on any provisional ballot before it is certified.

Johnson expects a possible 70 percent turnout for the general election.

Registered voters exceed 611,000 in Hillsborough, but as many as 55,955 voters may vote by absentee ballot, he said.

While lines are expected to be much shorter at early voting sites than at most precincts on Nov. 2, Johnson still seeks patience from early voters.

"We don't have voter registers at early voting, so poll workers have to look up a voter on a laptop," he said. "We also have more ballot styles to pick from since we have to have all type ballots for all voters at all early voting sites."

After a foul-up in the Aug. 31 primary, Johnson has spent extra time developing security procedures for the Sequoia touch screen voting machines now used by the county.

Seventeen days after the primary, Johnson revealed that his staff had discovered that 245 votes cast at the early voting site at the West Gate Library had gone uncounted because a supervisor had left a voting machine in the test mode.

Since the votes were discovered after the election certification, they did not count in the primary. Johnson said the lost votes would not have changed the outcome of any race.

This time, Johnson said, three people - the person testing a voting machine, a supervisor and the elections center manager - will have to sign off to show a machine is not in test mode.

When polls open, two people will re-inspect all machines to assure they are not in the test mode. A final audit will be performed by elections officials at the close of voting.

-- Jeff Testerman can be reached at testerman@sptimes.com or 813 226-3422.

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