What’s Wrong With These People

Most of Florida’s supervisors of elections [one per county] are non-partisan. They have to be elected [except for Miami-Dade], but they are usually people who started in the office as clerks and worked their way up to the top and then waited for the old supervisor to retire. They aren’t interested in talking to the media about controversy, they want to avoid any. They need the media for voter outreach for elections, but they want to talk to feature reporters, not the people on the police beat, or the political reporters.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony in Florida, but no one, especially in an area like West Palm Beach wants to get carried away with a criminal case if they can avoid it. They want to keep their records in order, produce election results in a timely fashion, finish all of their paperwork, and hope for more money in the next county budget. After the 2000 election, Palm Beach County does not want any election problems.

That is what make this Associated Press report, Ann Coulter Says She Won’t Cooperate in Voting Probe, so stupid. The woman goes to the office, corrects the paperwork, says “oops, sorry”, Dr. Anderson says “naughty, naughty, don’t do it again”, and the problem goes away.

By stonewalling, the supervisor of elections is being forced to refer this to the state attorney. He doesn’t have a choice, the woman was recognized and a complaint was filed. The man operates a bureaucracy and there is a blank that needs filling. Until it is filled, it is an open sore in the filing system.

As Terry at Nitpicker notes, this could be Coulter’s last chance to vote in Florida if she keeps messing around.