Few Problems At Plant City Voting Sites

A small survey of polling places in the Plant City area showed the precincts were line free after 6 p.m., with some seeing only a trickle of voters coming in after 5 p.m.

Precincts 754, 751 and 750, all on Mud Lake Road, bordering Walden Lake and the southwest side of the city, saw most of the voting in the early morning hours and then a steady flow of voters, but no long lines or backups at the polls.

Precinct 750, at the Church of the Nazarene, had a scanner machine fail at about 7:15 this morning. Voters waited about 40 minutes as poll employees waited for the machine to be fixed. Poll clerk Gloria

Cozart said that other than the early-morning glitch there were no other problems at the poll.

"Some of the ballots will have to be counted by hand after the polls close," Cowart said.
Precinct 753, on the east side of the city, had brisk voting until about 5 p.m., said poll deputy Joseph Jalbert.

Unofficial numbers of votes cast at these precincts during Election Day are 470 votes at 754; 881 at 751; 693 at 753 and no report from 750.

During early voting at City Hall from Oct 20-31, there were a total of 8,818 votes cast. That is an average of just over 800 voters each day. Comparing that to 2,044 at 3 of the 11or more precincts in the greater Plant City area and the number of votes cast has been substantial.

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.

There were no lines at the voting booths at Lord of Life Lutheran Church on Mud Lake Road Tuesday afternoon. And while other parts of the state had reported problems with optical ballot scanners, election workers said they had no such problems. Poll workers estimated they had served some 800 voters since they opened.