Elections Office: Turnout Light
BY BUDDY NEVINS
With campaign workers outnumbering voters in many polls, the turnout in the primary is extremely light.
Some experts estimate that as few as 8 percent could vote in this election, but others place it at 10-14 percent.
The light turnout the Supervisor of Elections Office said they were experiencing across the county may not reflect the final turnout.
In early voting, 16,333 voted. Another 40,000-plus voted by absentee.
So more than 50 percent casted their ballots before today if there is a 10 percent turnout.
There were no serious incidents or trouble with voting reported by the supervisor’s office at the polls.
“We’re having a good day,” said Mary Cooney, spokeswoman for the elections office.
The Miami Herald, however, was reporting some minor problems in Hallandale Beach with the machine that verifies a voter’s identification. Cooney told The Herald that the problem, and another with the same device in Sunrise, didn’t stop anybody from voting.
In one of the most closely watched races among Democrats, Mitch Ceasar is fighting to remain a chairman of the party. He must win today’s election for precinct committee member in his west Plantation neighborhood to be eligible to run in the December party chair elections.
Wearing a t-shirt with his name emblazoned across it in three-inch high green letters, the long-time chairman was greeting voters at his polling place in Plantation’s central Park. At times his college-age daughter helped him campaign.
Ceasar was not alone.
Just a few feet away, dissident Democrats led by veteran political consultant Barbara Miller were campaigning for the anti-Ceasar candidate whose election would topple the chairman.
Campaigns hired numerous workers to stand outside polling places and on street corners in the tropical heat. Sometimes the tactic backfired.
“Drove by my polling place (Riverside Elem), which isn’t even in the top 10 highest voting precinct in my district, and (the candidate) had some degenerate homeless looking guy standing out front holding her sign (who I’m sure she got from the labor pool),” one Coral Springs voter e-mailed about the northwest Broward School Board race.
Another consultant said a campaign he was working on hired teenagers to wave signs at intersections. They were shocked to find one of the teenagers wearing a baseball cap with the inscription: “Let’s Get Naked And Fuck”
The consultant told the youth to remove the hat.
And in Lauderdale Lakes a campaign worker waving a sign for a county commission candidate was wearing a dirty t-shirt that read “Black Power”. In addition to campaigning, he attempted to sell drivers bottled water.
August 14th, 2012 at 4:43 pm
ROFLMAO……….clearly the consultant who hired the teenager forgot the kid was a teenager. They need to be reminded what is acceptble by polite society.
Thanks for the out right laugh.
August 14th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
In all candor, lets get naked and fuck is the only thing I’ve heard all day that makes any sense.
August 14th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Hiring homeless at polling sites and to deliver material door to door is a page out of Barbara Sharief’s playbook. Who volunteers and why pay postage when you can the homeless can do it for a few bucks a piece.
August 14th, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Hiring the homeless sounds like a great strategy for the general election in November. I think I will gather up a bunch of winos and crack heads, give them some cheap beer and wine, give them some Obama campaign literature and send them out door to door.