Meaningless Story: O. J., Rothstein Can Vote
BY SAM FIELDS
Civic activist Andrew Ladanowski has found a hobby. It’s going through South Florida voter registration lists for the names of famous/infamous ineligible voters still on the roles.
The media—in recent days the Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald– loves to take these non-stories and make them seem like scandals.
His two big fish are the infamous former football player and current con O.J. Simpson and Ponzi scammer Scott Rothstein.
But I suspect the Florida voter lists include over a million names that no longer are eligible to vote. If that sounds frightening, the reality is bupkis.
Many died. Most just moved.
In either case, voters, or their heirs, are about as likely to notify the Supervisor of Elections as they are to contact the county to cancel their library cards
There is no indication that Simpson, Rothstein or any of the dead are “voting” in Florida. It’s these kinds of stories that the GOP uses to wedge their way into laws to purge legitimate voters and suppress minority turnout with needless requirements.
Want Florida to spend millions on certified letters to everyone we suspect is ineligible to vote? Want to have the Supervisor of Elections spend countless hours–think $$$–holding hearings for voters trying to show that they are a “different Irving Goldberg” and not the dead one?
Florida voter purge is governed under FS 98.065 et. seq. An inquiry is initiated if the Supervisor gets back mail. Follow-up letters are sent. If they also come back, the voter is put on an inactive list for two Federal Elections cycles before being removed. The State is responsible to notify local elections offices about the dead and felons.
According to the person I spoke to at The Broward Supervisor of Elections Office, the total number of persons they suspect illegally voted in the 2012 Presidential election was….ZERO!
Note to Mr. Ladanowski. You need another hobby? I can suggest one that you can also do at home…and your computer is optional.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:51 am
Meanwhile, Sam Fields has been voting illegally for years because he is brain dead.
May 28th, 2014 at 3:55 pm
“Also according to the Broward Supervisor of Elections there is NO SEX IN THE CHAMPAIGNE ROOM….ZERO!”
May 28th, 2014 at 7:42 pm
I think those were the facts that the media picked up on among many that were presented by Andrew. Wish they had looked at the other stuff too. But that’s the media mentality these days, I guess.
May 31st, 2014 at 3:34 pm
Mr. Fields,
The media including Broward Beat posted the story about Scott W Rothstein. You are correct when you state that this should be not be a story. It was what the media selected.
I would not want Dr. Snipes nor the other 66 supervisor of elections to spend time purging voters, this should be limited to the state, if this process could be done fairly. But we know this is not true, since lots of mistakes were made during previous purging attempts. The state told me when I informed them of OJ Simpson that the voter registration is only compared with state offense, not federal or out of state offenses. More serious criminals with federal offenses are not affected. I knew Scott W Rothstein would be still on the list, and just needed to confirm it. Petty criminals with limited means in Florida are affected. The State law allows individual county Supervisors to remove felons, but this is only to absolve the state of accountability for its inability to purge data correctly.
The media including Broward Beat has not been interested in some of the other information I have found. I have reported to the state and media over 100 voters in Miami Dade with two voter id’s. In a quick sampling of data I did find a person who has voted twice and asked for an opinion by the state supervisor of elections. No media is interested in covering this, so why bother researching. I have informed the media of instances where I could determine how individual people voted but no one seems interested.
My biggest concern was voting wait times. This needed to be fixed. Last summer, I also tried to inform the public that the majority of the voting issues were due to some precincts having as few as two voters with some having over 3800 voters which has existed for over 10 years. Dr Snipes finally resolved this issue earlier this year. I will give you some history. I brought this forward to the County Commission and particularly Commissioner Stacy Ritter, and her staff member Ken Paul, to discuss. I even spoke last summer to the County Commissioners when Dr. Snipes was going to be asking for more funding. Commissioner Ritter reached out to Dr. Snipes. Commissioner Ritter and her staff were wonderful. My question: Was there any state law that prevented her from fixing the issues with precincts prior to the Nov 2012 elections?
Could English only ballots been available by request, three languages slow the process down. This would speed up the process for at least half of the voters?
I also informed the media that a lot of equipment sits at election day polling stations for several weeks prior to election day at those sites, instead of being used during early elections. Is there a reason why we can’t have the equipment being used during early voting and on election day? I have suggested she use county staff to make sure that more equipment could be used for both election day and early voting by having county staff assist on moving equipment on the Monday before election day.
After the election Dr. Snipes formed a committee and Ellen Brodsky, a committee member, stated “The long lines were due to unequal distribution of voting booths and the voters” No one discussed this with Dr. Snipes to see what steps are made to prevent this.
Many absentee ballots were rejected as acknowledge by Mary Hall an employee in Broward county SOE, when staff was required by state law to match signature. If signatures were missing as per state law SOE needed to reject those. Were letters mailed out to people informing them that there ballot was rejected? How many were rejected? Will voters who’s signature was rejected in the past be warned this year that there ballot was rejected last election since the signature was not matching? What is the process this time?
Why didn’t the media advertise that Dr. Snipes accepted all ballots that did not have postage? Miami Dade advertised they had free postage. Will she accept ballots with no postage this time? This would have encourage more people to vote and would have reduced voting lines.
Also I think the media should be asking what all the supervisors of elections are supposed to do with all the undeliverable voter registration cards they received. Shouldn’t they be an indication that those voters need to be checked?
June 3rd, 2014 at 1:47 pm
swome of that stuff actually seems important.
If you have evidence that someone double voted you should contact the State Attorney