Yet another Florida election screwup. Many of the polling places didn’t open on time, so they were supposed to stay open 2 hours late until 9PM. Some of them closed early and people were turned away. Some of the voting machines didn’t boot (I seem to recall reading that they used Windows CE) or didn’t work correctly. Even Janet Reno wasn’t able to vote until later in the day. They had trouble collecting the ballots (the cards are read into a laptop, from which it’s transmitted to the main system) and all of the ballots *still* aren’t counted. The democratic race for governor is still undecidedd, although McBride appears to be slightly ahead. Question 14 (Take Back Miami-Dade’s attempt to overturn the human rights ordinance) appears to have been defeated even though many of the areas that had voting problems were against it, which may account for the margin being narrower than expected.
Bill McBride surged ahead of Janet Reno in the polls after Jeb Bush started targeting him with negative ads – a strategy that seems to have backfired on him. Bush knew McBride has a better chance of beating him, since Janet Reno has too many negatives. Since I’m registered as a Libertarian, I didn’t get to vote in that race. Any democrat would be preferrable to Bush, and the first thing he needs to do is get rid of the clown Bush appointed to the DCF. Where I voted (a small church on NE 26th St, a few blocks from me) there were no problems, and only a few people were there when I went, around 12:30PM. The machine seemed to work nicely – the screen was large, bright, and clear, and the touch screen was responsive.