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Voting Goes 'Beautifully'

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By LAURA KINSLER

lkinsler@tampatrib.com

Published: November 5, 2008

DADE CITY - More than 100,000 Pasco County voters took advantage of early or absentee voting to avoid the long lines predicted for this historic election.

Perhaps because of the strong turnout for early voting, those lines never materialized at most of the county's polling places Tuesday.

"It seems lighter than a usual Election Day," Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley said.

Pasco's 73 percent turnout fell short of the 80 percent Corley had predicted.

At 2:20 p.m., Ray Erickson, the precinct supervisor at the Alice Hall Community Center in Zephyrhills, looked like he was waiting for something to do.

"It's lighter than predicted," Erickson said. "They predicted we'd get 1,200 voters today, but right now, we have less than 500. Between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., we had 120 people, but nobody waited more than 20 minutes."

Voters strolled into First Baptist and First Presbyterian churches in Dade City with no wait. Poll workers said there was a line at 7 a.m., but not for the rest of day. More than 40 percent of people in those precincts voted early.

Mike Adams said he expected to wait. "It didn't take me five minutes," he said. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 10."

The optical scan voting machines operated smoothly, but a handful of the county's new electronic voter-identification units malfunctioned. In Holiday, voters were turned away for about 20 minutes before the problem was resolved. Corley said the voters should never have been turned away because poll workers could have checked voters' identifications against a printout.

"That was a poll worker problem," Corley said. "We spent a lot of time on that in training. He should never have turned any voters away.

"That's a huge no-no."

All precincts results were posted in a little more than two hours, and voters gave high marks to the new optical scan voting system.

"It would be kind of hard to make a mistake" with the new equipment, said Tom Dusz, 59, of Lexington Oaks. "But then I never had a problem with the old system.

The precincts that had fewer early voters had larger Election Day turnouts. At midday, voters waited about an hour or longer to cast their votes at the Regency Park Civic Association building in Port Richey and at Precinct 142 in Seven Oaks.

"It's been great so far," said Regency Park precinct supervisor Karen Lane. "Every machine has been going beautifully. We've had a turnout that's been unbelievable."

At the Seven Oaks polling place in Wesley Chapel, about 100 people waited quietly in line at about 12:30 p.m. Jennifer Jeffrey and her husband, Thomas Barthmus, waited 25 minutes to vote.

"It's an opportunity for someone different," Jeffrey said. "It's just been old stuffy white dudes. I think if there was a purple Martian, I would have voted for him."

Reporters Geoff Fox, Mary McCoy, Kevin Wiatrowski and Andy Jones contributed to this report.

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