things went pretty smoothly down here this time around. of course, the boards of elections were VERY careful not to repeat the debacle of 2000. thank god i was working in the confines of the safe computer room and not out in the polling precincts! the poll workers had to deal with some pretty angry people. some of them couldn't vote--usually because they had messed up on their registration forms (forgotten to sign them or something), or they hadn't voted in years, hadn't responded to repeated letters asking if they were still in orange county and at that address, and then were expunged from the records because the county assumed they had either moved or were deceased. then, of course, they showed up yesterday and....
the best was one poll worker who called up (she really needed some xanax by this point) with a lady who INSISTED on voting at that particular location (it was the closest to her house), even though it was not her precinct! the poll worker had explained to the lady that she was not registered there and that every precinct had different ballots because they were located in different districts, therefore she would conceivably be voting for candidates who would not be representing her. plus, as she was not on the books in that precinct and could not sign an oath saying that she now lived in that precinct, she couldn't vote there. but, oh no, the woman was not having it. so, the poll worker called us. i told the poll worker basically what she had told the lady and also that voting in the wrong precinct was a felony. the poll worker told the lady this and i heard the lady say, 'but that precinct is SO FAR away!' now, this was around 5 pm, around 2 hours from closing time. she had plenty of time to get to her voting place (now, in this city, no polling site is THAT far away from one's home!). plus, she had months to ask for an absentee ballot. idiot! man, you couldn't have paid me enough to deal with people like that. by around 6:30, the poll workers sounded as though they were going to cry on the phone. i wanted to go around the county bringing them each a care package of scotch and valium! what a day!
well, bad results from my perspective, but it's just a result of the spiralling right-wing paranoia after september 11, if you ask me. (some of the ads here in florida were insane...even the incumbent republican commissioner of agriculture was talking about saving the state from bio-terrorism. anthrax oranges!) and, as robert reich said on NPR this morning, the new congress will push dubya too far to the right, so there will be a backlash in 2004. WE'LL BE BACK! 
