Dems in Charlotte Count,y FL

John Hackworth, a reporter for the Sun-Herald newspaper in Port Charlotte, reported three incidents which illustrate what sometimes happens to Democrats where we live.

On Election Day, a Democratic Party member found a nice downtown corner in Punta Gorda to put up some signs for Democratic candidates. It was nowhere near a polling place. But police said she was violating some local ordinance or other.

Another Democratic Party member handed out materials outside a polling place in Punta Gorda only to be confronted by a poll worker who charged up to her and demanded she leave and take her handouts with her. She told him to go call the police because she knew she was in the right. This time, there were no police. Other poll workers apparently reminded the aggressive one that the line was 100 feet from a polling place beyond which politicking is legal.

The city council of Punta Gordsa did a thoughtful thing. They allowed the Republicans who won the primary to leave their signs up until November. They did not happen to also allow Dems to put up their signs sooner than 45 days before the election, which is the usual requirement.

A couple years ago, a Dem took a sign into the local county-supported cultural center where Governor Jeb Bush was speaking. The lone man stood quietly against the wall opposite the entrance to the meeting room. His sign was critical of the Iraq war. The county sheriff himself arrested the man for disturbing the peace, handcuffed him, and escorted him to a deputy who drove him to the court house where he was released.

As my friend Garrett said, "Some folks want to have a police state, as long as they can be the police!"

I must add that the sheriff took a lot of heat for his actions.

At the polling places where I've worked, you really can't tell which workers are one party or the other or neither. Each polling place has to have at least one of each. Usually, the atmosphere has been like an "Old Home Week."

I really haven't heard of others given the unfair treatment I listed above.

But as I reported in my previous blog, several things are either incompetently done or are intentionally done to discourage voters.

The first time I worked in the precinct was also a primary. The precinct had just changed the voting site, giving an address that put people on the wrong street. Further, the people at the former voting site did not know where the new site was. Sounds familiar! Even so, 152 people made it for that election.

We had 121 this time.

We had ethnic families vote that year and in the Presidential Primary last January. No ethnic families came this time even though school was out. White mothers with kids came this time in numbers I don't remember from before.

Another problem was the various ID numbers we had to record before we started and reconcile after closing the polls on sheets that were not always clear about what they wanted. In fact, one key sheet was on the very bottom of the main materials bag, something we did not find until after the poll had to open.

There are always glitches when a new system is tried. It will be interesting to see if those same glitches plague us in November. . . .