-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/2/_/1406/_/974343183/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com Published Wednesday, November 15, 2000, in the Miami Herald GOP staff took in hundred of ballots BY JOSEPH TANFANI AND FRANCES ROBLES [EMAIL PROTECTED] Despite tough rules designed to keep absentee ballots out of the hands of campaign operatives, Republican Party workers obtained hundreds of them from voters during their aggressive drive to increase turnout for George W. Bush. An estimated 500 to 600 completed ballots were collected by Bush volunteers or dropped off at campaign offices in Little Havana, Westchester and Hialeah, according to GOP campaign officials in charge of the absentee vote. Volunteers put on stamps and rushed them into the mail, even sending some overnight to make sure they arrived on time. ``I remember putting stamps on them myself,'' said Miami Commissioner Joe Sanchez, who was heading the Bush Little Havana operation on Coral Way. But Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor David Leahy says he does not like campaign operatives knocking on doors and picking up absentee ballots, saying that increases the chances of election chicanery. ``If a voter needs help, they can call us. They don't have to be asked if they need help by campaigns,'' he said. ``That's beyond what they should be doing.'' The Bush campaign officials said they were meticulous about following new rules put in place after the fraud-plagued 1997 Miami mayoral election. ``At no time were our workers able to manipulate absentee ballots,'' said Maria de la Milera, a longtime Republican Party worker who supervised Bush's Miami-Dade absentee operation. ``We ran a clean campaign.'' With the outcome of the White House hinging on Florida, both Democrats and Republicans ran frenzied get-out-the-vote campaigns that focused largely on generating thousands of absentee ballots. Bob Poe, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said the party sent pre-printed forms requesting absentee ballots to likely absentee voters. The ballot request forms already had key information -- name, voter I.D. number -- filled out. ``All they had to do is sign it and mail it,'' Poe said. But when the dust cleared, Republicans were more successful than Democrats at garnering absentee votes. Republicans in Dade cast 24,000 absentee ballots, Democrats about 17,000. Those votes played a key role in handing Bush a razor-thin victory in Florida's vote count. In Miami-Dade, for example, Gore beat Bush handily at the polls, winning 53 to 46 percent. But Bush won the absentee vote 58 to 41 percent, piling up a 7,411-vote advantage. Under strict new county rules, campaigns could not request absentee ballots for voters by phone, then collect them and turn in bagfuls at the elections office. In an effort to reduce opportunities for fraud, the county required voters to mail their ballots directly to County Hall or drop them off. Both campaigns found ways to skirt the rules. They flooded the state with tens of thousands of pre-printed absentee request forms to make sure ballots got into voters' hands, telling voters they merely had to sign them and turn them in. Campaigns tracked which ones returned their envelopes, then telephoned the holdouts. Despite the mail-in-only rule, Bush campaign workers say voters turned in ballots to campaign offices instead of the elections department. Why? ``Because they wanted to vote for us,'' Sanchez said. However, late in the campaign, volunteers started picking up request forms and ballots at voters' homes, De la Milera said. If voters wanted to know which holes to punch, volunteers would give them cards listing GOP candidates. ``They would punch the numbers, they would do the sealing, everything,'' she said. In 1998, state legislators passed a tough new law adding anti-fraud measures to absentees. One rule would have made absentees list the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. But most of those new restrictions were frozen by the U.S. Justice Department. One rule that survived -- requiring voters to list their voter registration numbers when they ask for a ballot -- apparently is being widely ignored. In Miami-Dade and Broward, absentee ballot requests were honored without the number. Konformist Note: Read the quote from the following story. http://www.feedmag.com/templates/daily.php3?a_id=1389 What is most stunning, though, is that Suarez now sits on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade Republican party and was specifically involved this year in helping get out the Republican vote. Suarez, who told FEED that he is working to become the committee's chairman, said that leading up to last night's election he "helped fill out absentee ballot forms and enlist Republican absentee voters in Miami-Dade County." If the 2000 or so disputed votes in the Palm Beach area are in fact returned from Buchanan to Gore, these same ballots may very well decide the presidential election in the coming hours. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. 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