Florida Man Keeps on Counting

This morning’s headline was “Here We Go Again.” I know you all are having a big laugh at the state that can’t finish its elections on time. I resent that. Nothing that happens in Florida wouldn’t happen in other states if you were as evenly divided politically as Florida.

 OK, we have three statewide races – governor, senator and commissioner of agriculture – in recounts, as well as three legislative races, one of them in my county that is formerly famous for hanging chads. More than 8.1 million votes were cast. The percentage difference in the Senate race is 50.08 to 49.92. In the governor’s race it’s 49.59 to 49.18.

 The agriculture commissioner race is a tad wider, but it’s going to recount too since the Democrat has the lead at the moment. Commissioner of agriculture may not sound like much, but the commissioner regularly has to certify every gasoline pump in the state for accuracy.

 Anyhow, as you can see, Florida defines purple.

 Now, what makes it harder to be purple are the things other states have but don’t have to put front and center every time there is an election.

 First thing: Idiots.

 Our ballots go through machines, but when a day of voting is over and you see that 150 ballots went through a machine but only 148 votes were tallied, you have to wonder about the other two votes. And so you look at the cards the voters stuck in the machines, and you find two on which the votes were cast as X’s, rather than by filling in a line on an arrow as instructed both orally by a poll worker and in print right there on the ballot card -- with an illustration.

 The state constitution requires that a vote must be counted if the voter’s intention can be discerned, no matter whether a machine can read the intention or  not. So you have to take the ballot to eyeballs.

 Why would someone make a mistake? A lot of people don’t listen and don’t read. That’s why, at the homeowner association meeting, the people who were chatting in the back of the room all during the meeting have to ask all the questions to which the chair has previously given the answers. And some can’t hear. There was a guy who used to call me about once a month and keep asking me to speak up until everyone in the building could hear me. At which point he’d turn the phone over to his wife, and she would say, “He won’t put his hearing aid in” and tell me what he called about.

 And then there is: “That’s is how we did it up north.” I don’t imagine Minnesota runs into too much of that, but we surely do. And the thing is, they never say they haven’t done it up north since 20 years ago.

 And then there are politicians. Oh, I already said “idiots.” Our governor, who is in the recount now for Senate, announced he wouldn’t “sit idly by” while “unethical liberals” stole the election. So he sued the supervisors of elections in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, and they were in court Friday when they should have been directing vote counts. The governor, Red Tide Rick Scott, sat idly by for eight years while nothing good happened in the state but his bank account swelled amazingly, and now he has bestirred himself to get in the way of people doing their job.

 So we are heading into recounts for which our local supervisor says the state does not allow enough time, and the governor and state election supervisor have known that for years but sat idly by. They only  worry that a person of color might vote illegally somewhere and throw a whole election to the unethical liberals.

 As usual, the recount will feature Democrats trying to count all the votes including those marked with pocket lint, and the Republicans will be in court trying to stop the count while their candidate is ahead.

 It could happen in any state where 0.16 percent separates the candidates.