Election day, by the minute: An amalgam of news and scenes
By Times staff writers
Published November 3, 2004
7:02 A.M.: Poll workers insert the first voting card into the activation machine at Precinct 188 in northeast St. Petersburg. Nothing happens. "On no," cries an aghast poll worker, fruitlessly pushing buttons on the machine. Anxiety spreads through the room until a voice of reason makes a successful suggestion: "Turn it on."
7:05: About 100 voters line up outside Tampa's Progressive Village Civic Center, a heavy turnout that is playing out all over the Tampa Bay area. "Wow!" shouts Dee Norman as she arrives. "That is a line," adds her companion, Doris V. Sadler. After a bit, Norman grows antsy and pronounces the line ridiculous. "No, this is beautiful," Sadler counters. "We've never had this much riding on the line."
7:10: Claudia Schoenstein, 65, arrives at Precinct 536 at Clearwater's Top of the World West. People sit in rows of chairs that extend out the door. Instead of forming a line, poll workers assign people numbers amid considerable confusion. "I heard her call number 500 and something, but she tells me I am 152," Schoenstein says. She waits with others outside, but can't hear the numbers being called and her back is hurting. After a few minutes, she goes home, hoping to vote later.
7:20: Chuck Baker pushes and pushes on a touch screen at Precinct 418 in Redington Shores, but the machine won't register his vote. Poll workers say his fingers are too oily and offer to get him a stylus. While waiting, he uses the antenna of his cell phone. Reviewing his votes at the end, he notices they are correct, except for president and senator. He insists he pushed Kerry and Castor but the machine recorded Bush and Martinez. It works the second time.
7:45: Edward Willis, 53, sits outside a fire department in Gadsden County, near Tallahassee, which tossed out the largest percentage of ballots in 2000. He tallies each voter with a handheld counter, part of a labor union monitoring project called Operation Big Vote. Willis, a former Clearwater resident, says voters have faith in the process. "But they are very conscious of what happened in 2000, and we're doing as much as we can to keep that from happening again."
7:55: Pearline and Freamon McNair hold hands as they walk into Jacksonville's Carter Woodson Elementary School, where voters used the optical scan system. Freamon, 80, is legally blind and is sure his vote was one of 27,000 thrown out in Duval County during 2000's presidential election. On their way out, Pearline, 72, reports no problems in the booth, no challenges, no confusing ballots. "Praise God," she says. "I'm so glad it's over."
8:50: At St. Petersburg's Coliseum, Carole Krayer encounters a voting machine that only a Democrat could love. Over and over, she presses the Bush circle, which opens up, then pops down to Kerry. Her vote for Republican Senate candidate Mel Martinez pops down to Democrat Betty Castor. A poll worker blames her long fingernails, saying she must be hitting the wrong candidate. The poll worker gives her a pencil and says to vote with the eraser, but the craziness continues. Finally, the worker acknowledges that the machine "needs calibrating." She switches to another machine and votes for the president.
10:00: Eddie Nunez would warm the hearts of Democratic strategists who hope to peel off a chunk of South Florida's solidly Republican Cuban-American vote. His vote for Bush four years ago, "was a big mistake," says Nunez, a software engineer angry about Iraq. Ahead of him in line at a Miami Shores precinct is Luis Rodrigues, 68, a retired K-Mart store manager. "You have to be united in war time, and you can't have traitors saying it's wrong," Rodriguez counters.
10:15 AND 10:30: Tires squeal outside the Police Athletic League in St. Petersburg's Woodlawn neighborhood as a car runs up on the lawn of a nearby house. A man jumps out and runs off; dozens of police cars seal off the area. Police believe they are chasing Craig Middleton, 19, a suspect in a vicious August beating. For 30 minutes, police maintain a roadblock on 16th Street outside the Police Athletic League, which holds three precincts. People inside the roadblock are routed to the back of the building and stay in line. But the flow of new voters diminishes until the roadblock is lifted. Middleton escapes.
ABOUT NOON: Claudia Schoenstein makes her fourth trip to Precinct 536 at Clearwater's Top of the World community, where poll workers have been assigning numbers to people instead of forming a line. A poll worker listens to Schoenstein's story and slips her the number of another voter who had just left. She approaches a second poll worker and says she was outside and didn't hear her number called. The second poll worker lets her vote immediately.
2:50 P.M.: With short lines and few problems in Pasco County, the canvassing board reviews absentee ballots, disallowing many with write-in candidates, including this submission in a congressional race: "Anyone else."
3:30: Seventy-two voters wait outside Woodlawn Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg, including Mary Lanzing, who is there for the third time. A secretary, Lanzing tried to vote before going to work, but the line was too long. She tried at 2 p.m. and found another big line. This time, "I may sit down in the middle of the sidewalk, but I am here until I vote," she says. Angela VoVillia goes her one better. This is her fourth attempt. "I've got kids in two different schools," she says. "I feel like I've been driving around all day waiting for the line to go away and it never did." After 45 minutes, she enters the precinct to discover two more lines inside.
4:00: Decision time: U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara lets 16 jurors hearing the bribery accusations against former Tampa housing director Steve LaBrake go home early so they can vote.
4:00: Northeast Presbyterian Church in Shore Acres holds Precinct 158, with 1,470 registered voters and Precinct 159, which holds 2,167. The line for one lasts an hour and a half and stretches around the side of the church. The other line takes 15 minutes. "I don't care where it is, I'm moving into that precinct," says Will Henderson, 42, stuck in the longer line. "Someone needs to even this out. We're all waiting here and there's empty machines 20 feet away."
4:02: For 20 minutes, not a single voter has shown up at Precinct 142 in St. Petersburg's Coliseum. Outside, Kerry supporter Dutch Hoffmann, who wanted to hand out literature, gestures at an empty parking lot. "I had to wait two hours to vote (in Pinellas Point). I was surprised when I came up here and found this."
6:53: Paul Morrow, 20, of Darby sheepishly enters the side door of Pasco County's enormous Elections Support Center, bringing his absentee ballot. "I wasn't sure they'd take it," he says, admitting to monumental procrastination. He makes the deadline by seven minutes. "If it comes down to one vote ... I did my part."
8:20: Patrick Harms' first vote was the last vote cast at St. Luke's Methodist Church in St. Petersburg. Harms was 25 people deep in line when 7 p.m. came; he was allowed to be the last voter, emerging an hour and a half later having voted for Kerry. "I got my vote in," Harms said.
Times staff writers Vanessa Gezari, Steve Hegarty, Adam Smith, Anne Lindberg, Monique Fields, Matthew Waite, David Adams, Jean Heller, Tamara Lush, Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler and Graham Brink contributed to this report.
