AND THE RECOUNT GOES ON

PREFACE
I can't imagine the stress level at the County Elections office. There are protesters, Florida officials, and observers from both political parties vying for "their right to see every ballot counted" and to give opinions over ANY available media. #45 is leading the pack in misinformation and misdirection. There are not enough people to do this monumental job, but they persevere despite accusations that are hurled at them everyday this is not resolved.

STORY
The people doing the recounting are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to get these ballots recounted, AND validate mail-in absentee ballots and PROVISIONAL ballots cast on election day. These are VOLUNTEERS! doing all this additional work. Would you volunteer to be stuck in a room, feeding page after page of ballots into a machine? only to end up losing all of them because the machine overheated!! These machines are made to work one or two days, every two years, for 12 hours. It's like running a Hyundai in the INDY 500! Somewhere around lap 300, it's gonna breakdown.

So Brenda Snipes has announced that the recount of cast ballots (and initial count of absentee ballots) will be done by 3 p.m. Thursday. So what then? If the count is still within the parameters of a "very close" race between the governor's race and the senator's race (and the AG, for that matter), it will trigger a MANUAL HAND COUNT of all acceptable ballots.

Acceptable Ballots. That is something that is VERY controversial as there has been advantages put in place by Republicans (specifically Rick Scott) that may be enough to tip in their favor. Florida has an "EXACT SIGNATURE MATCH" law in regards to absentee ballots. As I stated in my previous posts, your signature changes naturally over the years. Some parts of it always stay the same, but those parts are NOT ALL THE SAME PARTS for everyone. As a pollworker, I had to validate the signature on the voter's ID matching it to the signature they signed on the signature-pad on election day. As the voter, you can't see how your signature appears as you sign. The "pen" is not a regular pen. The area you are signing is not a familiar signing surface. So we look for similar "parts" of the signature to match, but NOT AN EXACT MATCH!

Your signature may have become MORE illegible/scribbled as you've aged, or you may have purposefully or unintentionally changed it; by leaving off the dot over an 'I', or making the final mark sweep up for Feng Shui, or illness has your hand shaking, or your eyesight is failing, or you stopped using your middle name/initial, etc.... There may be many reasons that your signature has changed since you last signed a Voter's Registration form, THE OFFICIAL SIGNATURE to which the Dept of Elections is comparing your mail-in ballot. MANY signatures will fail! so your vote won't count! Military service personnel, citizens traveling for pleasure, and officials/businesspersons out of the country on business, may have any/all absentee ballots disapproved because their signature does not match EXACTLY to the signature the Dept of Elections has on file. The could be 10s of 1000s, enough to sway the election to either candidate.

CONCLUSION
Before you believe what you read in social media or the news, think about all those people working day and night to ensure the freedom of every vote to being counted. The United States is not a dictatorship. It is not a Communist regime. It does not have a puppet government. The United States is a republic, of the people, for the people, and by the people. They are human beings, doing a thankless job, to insure a right and just election. Neither party will be happy with the outcome, if it goes against them. I would like to see it come down to a runoff. Take it to the people one, more, time! (NOTE: I'd like to know how Dade county finished their recount. What was overlooked, or invalidated as a matter of course?)