Many more watchers for Republicans than Democrats will be at precincts. No one signed up to represent Kerry.
By AMY WIMMER SCHWARB
Published October 26, 2004
With all eyes on Florida this election season, more eyes than ever before will be peering over election workers' shoulders at the polls in Citrus County.
Poll watchers, long a mainstay of the election process, have earned increasing attention this year because of trepidation about the 2000 presidential election process in Florida. Usually, a total of about two dozen people sign up to have access to the polls on Election Day.
This year, 76 people have signed up to watch over the voting at the polls.
"What they can do is observe the conduct of the election," said Supervisor of Elections Susan Gill, who said this year's number of poll watchers sets a record in Citrus. "And if they see ... something they have a question on or concern on, they can ask the clerk."
According to state statute, poll watchers must be registered voters in the county in which they are working. They must represent a political party or a particular candidate who is on the ballot. And they must have signed up by Oct. 19, two weeks before the election.
Poll watchers signed up to watch polls in Citrus are representing the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney campaign, the Mel Martinez campaign for U.S. Senate, and Sandra "Sam" Himmel's campaign for Citrus school superintendent.
Martinez is a Republican; Himmel is a Democrat. At the Citrus precincts, almost three times as many poll watchers are representing Republicans as are representing Democrats.
At the Democratic National Convention this summer, filmmaker Michael Moore, whose political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 was released earlier this year, promised the Florida delegation an "army of lawyers who will be poll watchers throughout the state."
But in Citrus, no one signed up to represent the John Kerry-John Edwards campaign, which Democratic Executive Committee chairman Frank Yetner attributed to a shortage of party volunteers.
"It is a priority to have an honest election and to make sure everybody gets to vote on their own, not somebody doing it for them," Yetner said Monday. "We just don't have people. We don't have enough people to get into the polls."
Poll watchers will not be present at every precinct, and some will have multiple poll watchers. At Precinct 307, for example, where the residents of Sugarmill Woods turn out in droves to vote at St. Thomas Catholic Church, a series of Republican poll watchers will keep an eye on proceedings, represent the Bush-Cheney campaign, the Citrus County Republicans and the Martinez campaign.
Another high-volume voting spot, Precinct 405, at the Citrus County Auditorium in Inverness, will have the highest number of poll watchers in Citrus: Nine watchers there will take shifts observing the polls for the Bush-Cheney campaign, the Citrus Republicans, Martinez and Himmel.
Gill said she is planning a training for poll watchers three days before the election. The watchers can stand behind the inspectors as they sign people in and distribute ballots and observe if a voter complains he or she was denied the right to vote.
Often poll watchers are on hand to note which voters have already cast a ballot, and then use that information to rally those who haven't.
The poll watchers should not interfere with the process, though. "We want to have an orderly election, and we want to respect each other," she said.
"When you think about it, this is the most-watched election in the history of the planet," Gill said. "Everyone's out there, and everyone's part of the process."
