|
 |
||
| Home | ||
| Venice Florida! dot com stories archive | ||
| ||||||||||||||||
|
Venice on the web
VFW diners hog voter parking on election day, leave 0 (zero) parking spaces
available for voters Got a comment? Make it here. Related:
Except for one minor detail. Maybe not so minor. In spite of the fact that Precinct 64 had the largest voter turnout, voters couldn't get in without overcoming one major obstacle: parking. Starting at sometime around 1:00 pm on November 4, the parking lot at VFW Post 8118, where Precinct 64 voters were assigned to vote, was jammed. Cars overflowed into the streets and onto the surrounding grass right-of-ways. Adjacent parking areas within walking distance were likewise jammed. Big voter turnout? Not quite. Big card game through the day at the VFW post. Big appetites among the post's vets as they ate dinner there that evening. After hearing a few complaints during the day, I finally went to the post to see for myself at around 6:00 pm on election day. Cars were everywhere, indicating a big voter turnout. After spending 15 minutes trying to park, I finally made it in to the polling place only to discover... Emptiness. Not a voter in the place. Six or seven pollworkers were milling about, but not a voter could be seen anywhere near the voting machines. Then I walked over to the VFW dining hall. The place was packed, SRO, with a line of folks waiting to be seated. The woman who greeted me told me there would be about a half-hour wait for a table. I walked out, shaking my head in disbelief. I went back out to the parking lot and immediately noticed one person trying to find an open parking spot to no avail. After a minute or two of awkward maneuvers, the car took off heading east on Venice Avenue. Not one open parking space was available for a voter to pull into at the time I was there. Not one.
Over 50 complaint calls made to the elections
supervisor while the polls were open In spite of the parking problems, the VFW polling location showed the largest turnout of all precincts in sheer numbers of voters -- 752 total at the precinct. The precinct has 2,537 registered voters. The next highest was Precinct 36 at Emmanuel Lutheran Church on the island, which received some 649 voters. In sharp contrast were the folks out at Venetian Golf and Country Club, where there was plenty of parking. 16 voters in total swamped pollworkers at the precinct during the 12-hour election workday. That's a whopping 1.33 voters per hour. It is important to note that the VFW was one of two precincts that failed to carry the $10 million bond issue with 389 votes against the bond, 342 votes for it at the precinct. The other precinct that failed to carry the bond was Bay Indies. The bond issue passed overall by 52.5%, a 232 vote margin. The final city-wide vote (including one absentee ballot that was not included in newspaper accounts; those accounts stated that there was a 231 vote margin) was 2,402 for the bond, 2,170 against. Would the bond issue have failed if all who wanted to vote could have gotten in to the polls? Who knows? Could the bond issue have failed if half of the parking spots had been set aside for voters? That's a definite yes. Given the close numbers of the final tally, it is entirely possible that the parking issue at the VFW could have potentially altered the final voting results on the bond issue. It is more than just a remote possibility that the bond issue might have been defeated if voters assigned to the VFW post had actually been able to access their assigned polling place. It appears to be statistically impossible that the overall outcome of the races for the two open council seats could have been changed by the parking situation at Precinct 64. With 844 votes separating the closest of the two races (Anderson / Simmonds), it doesn't appear that there is any statistical basis for projecting a different outcome in the race had more voters made it in to vote at the VFW post. Anderson carried 41.5% of the vote in Precinct 64, compared to a citywide percentage of 40.5%. Even if every single registered voter in Precinct 64 showed up and voted, there is absolutely no basis for projecting a possible Anderson win within any degree of statistical significance. The spread was even wider in the Taylor / Gelormino race, so after ruling out the possibility of an Anderson win, there was no point in doing the number-crunching in the Taylor / Gelormino race. In the city-wide vote, Taylor won her race with 68.2% of the vote. In Precinct 64, Taylor received 67.1%. But the bond? Whole different story.
Geek math stuff, involving social statistics and
mathematical rules of probability (a simplified summary) It is important to note that the numbers from Precinct 64 show that the bond issue would likely have passed city-wide anyway. However, if another 400 voters had walked up to the voting machines and had cast their votes, the statistical likelihood of the bond issue passing plummets to less than a 60% chance. In TV election coverage terms, this is what pundits would refer to as "too close to call." Thus, the possibility of the bond issue failing to pass into law cannot be ruled out with any degree of statistical significance if at least 400 more voters had made it into Precinct 64. Remember, the bond only passed by 232 votes. That's a pretty slim margin of victory as margins go.
If they don't like it, they can go elsewhere When told about the parking complaints received by the elections supervisor, Toscano wondered "...how many of those complaints were from the losing side," a seemingly moot point as the complaints were made while the polls were still open -- there was no winning or losing side yet. I told Toscano that, according to Dent, the bulk of the complaint calls came from pollworkers at the precinct. "Yeah, well, they had the full run of the place, used the refrigerator, the kitchen. One gal kept complaining because the thermostat was set at 70." Toscano noted that cars were parked everywhere around the building -- filling up the lot, on the grass, in adjacent streets, etc., but he denied that there were any parking problems: "I saw people coming and going, I never saw anyone get turned away by the parking situation." Likewise, Kathy Dent seemed to poo-poo the idea that voters might have been turned off by the parking situation. Dent noted that voters did have the option of voting in advance at county offices prior to election day. Ya can't argue with logic like that. Actually you can, but what would be the point? Dent did say that her office would be looking for different voting digs for the 64th precinct before the next election. She agreed that the situation would be totally unworkable for a presidential election year. In prior years, the precinct had voted at the R.V. Waymire Training Facility, a building inside of Wellfield Park that is used by the Venice Police Department for firearms and classroom training. Waymire was deemed unworkable due to handicap accessibility issues, and the VFW post seemed like a better location. By all indications, the VFW post location seemed like an ideal place: it's centrally located, the front door is close to the parking lot, it's easy as pie for wheelchairs to get in and out of, no major obstacles for folks with walkers, etc. It would have been ideal if only there had been some thought about dividing up the parking lot for voters and for VFW members.
Unanswered questions Somebody screwed up, though. Somebody screwed up big time. A lot of somebodys screwed up big time. As a result, questions about the validity of the voting process suddenly become legitimate questions. Questions that remain unanswered: Why didn't anyone from the elections office ask the VFW beforehand about their events calendar and parking issues? Why didn't the VFW alert the elections office of a potential problem with parking? Why didn't the police take eminent domain over half of the parking lot for the duration of the day to ensure that citizens could get in and vote? Why didn't someone at the VFW simply look outside their front door and notice that there was a problem, that they were hogging all of the parking? Did they think that they were the only people on the planet? Finally: after the elections supervisor received the first few complaints, why wasn't something, anything, done? Why did 50+ phone calls go unheeded?
Them's some pricey weeners in those buns, Sarge I hope the food was good at the VFW post on election day. I hope the food was fantastic. It was hot dog and hamburger night, by the way. We'll never know for sure, but those may have been the most expensive hot dogs ever served in Sarasota County. Those hot dogs have a potential $10 million price tag. Even if the outcome on the bond would have remained the same, it is still a shameful situation. If only one person was prevented from voting because of the parking problems, that is one voter too many. It's hard enough to get folks motivated to care about the issues, let alone to get them moving in the direction of a voting machine. To throw obstacles into their way is unconscionable. Oh. Happy Veterans Day. Thanks for your bravery in fighting for... whatever it was you fought for. Canasta? ...Bridge? ...Old Maid? ...Democracy! That's right. You fought for democracy. DOH!!!!!
John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times. |
|
