A decade after the infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads made Palm Beach County a national laughing stock, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher is snagged in a new paperwork snafu.
According to reports from the state Division of Elections, Palm Beach County is lagging far behind every other county in Florida in processing absentee ballots.
The reports show Bucher's office has accounted for just 14.55 percent of the domestic absentee ballots and only 10.48 percent of the military/overseas and non-Florida ballots.
That compares to a statewide average of 33.56 percent and 29.21 percent.
A campaign consultant, speaking on condition of anonymity, cited three possible reasons for Palm Beach's unseemly delays:
- Election office staffers are not going to the mailbox regularly.
- They're not scanning the ballot envelopes.
- Bucher is refusing to upload the county's absentee data to the state.
"In all likelihood, it's because theyre disorganized and slow to scan in the returns each day," the consultant said, noting that the county also is notoriously slow to report its results on election night.
But another more sinister scenario is possible, as well.
"Is Bucher a rabid partisan who refuses to upload data to hurt candidates who would chase the ballots?" the consultant wondered.
Bucher is a Democrat, and Republicans tend to use absentee ballots far more often than do Democrats -- particularly this year.
Whether due to incompetence or Machiavellian manipulation, Palm Beach County's numbers fall far outside the reports of Florida's 66 other counties -- big or small.
Pinellas County, for example, has recorded 31.9 percent of its state-leading 240,906 domestic absentee ballots. Even Miami-Dade, another hotbed of controversy during the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election, outpaces Palm Beach County, with a 30.5 percent rate.
Both counties mailed significantly more absentee ballots than Palm Beach, which said it sent 61,720 in-state ballots.
Bucher said she could not explain the delay in her county, but denied any tardiness on the part of her office.
"We process [the ballots] as we get them. We're up to date. I imagine we'll get an avalanche of them just before Election Day," she told Sunshine State News.
Bucher said she knew of no previous pattern of late returns in her county, but added, "Sometimes people just decide to come to the polls" and not send in their absentee ballots.
--
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
