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At Plant City Polls, It's Calm After A Storm Of Voters

Tribune photo by George Newman

The lines were moving again at precinct 750 in Plant City, where a scanning machine failed, causing a 40-minute delay at the polls.

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By GEORGE H. NEWMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2008

12:05 p.m.: Five of the precincts in the Plant City area had short lines at 10 a.m., with few problems reported by poll deputies.

Precinct 761 at Bethany Baptist Church in Cork, just northwest of Plant City, had three voters sitting in lounge chairs at 5:45 a.m. Poll deputy Howard Roberts said about 100 people were in line at 7 a.m. when the doors opened.

"Voters kept coming and going. The line moved along without too much of a wait," Roberts said. "But it was almost 10 a.m. when I could finally see the end of the line around the corner."

The Plant City area precincts visited by a reporter this morning had about 50 to 100 in line at 7 a.m. Precinct 750 had the only reported equipment glitch when a scanning machine went out of order, bringing the vote to a halt for about 40 minutes.

Poll deputy Jim Roland said the problem was fixed as quickly as possible and by 8:40 the line of voters waiting to enter the precinct was gone.

Voter James Garner said because of the machine failure there was no movement into or out of the precinct from 7:15 to about 8 a.m.

"You could tell some people were getting a little frustrated. But once the line started moving things settled down," Garner said.

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