-Caveat Lector-
[If you read this, read the whole thing. --MS]
Published Monday, December 4, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Nursing homes fumble balloting
Some residents voted improperly
BY MARIKA LYNCH, SARA OLKON AND ALFONSO CHARDY
Employees at some nursing home facilities in South Florida
allowed two voters to cast ballots both in Broward and Miami-Dade
counties and gave absentee ballots to three others who were not
entitled to them, a Herald survey shows.
In Miami-Dade, one nursing home resident who was not registered
to vote absentee cast a vote using the absentee ballot of a
fellow nursing home resident who had died. At other nursing
homes, properly registered voters cast absentee ballots but -- in
interviews later -- did not remember doing so.
The improper or questionable casting of absentee ballots at some
nursing home facilities is part of a growing brew of
irregularities involving absentee ballots during the Nov. 7
general election in Florida.
Prosecutors in Gainesville, for example, are considering filing
criminal charges in a case involving the alleged use of an
absentee ballot by a person who was not entitled to it. Also, 11
counties counted scores of questionable and in some instances
possibly illegal overseas absentee ballots.
Absentee ballots have always been fertile ground for voter fraud
because of lax laws that allow virtually any adult to handle
them.
Tougher laws enacted after widespread absentee ballot fraud in
the city of Miami's 1996 mayoral election were later blocked by
the U.S. Justice Department on the ground that they made it more
difficult for people of ethnic minorities and with disabilities
to vote.
Among the people who more frequently vote absentee are residents
of assisted and independent living facilities and nursing homes
-- many of whom are too frail to move or are confined to beds and
wheelchairs.
Florida law is silent on whether nursing home employees can
encourage residents to vote. But nursing homes are required to
do all they can to ensure that residents enjoy full civil
liberties.
State inspectors who review nursing home facilities investigate
complaints about infringements of a resident's right to vote,
said Bruce Congleton, spokesman for Florida's Agency for Health
Care Administration.
Marsha Faber, activities director at the Claridge House in
Miami-Dade, said state inspectors have reviewed her voters'
registration files twice in the last 11 years. The center's
policy is to ask everyone who moves in whether they want to vote.
``It's really not up to me to determine who is competent to
vote,'' Faber said. ``If the court hasn't deemed them
incompetent, and they are able to hold a conversation, then it's
definitely up to the individual.''
In Broward County, elections officials go directly to nursing
homes, assuring that the process isn't bungled. Miami-Dade does
this when asked.
In a random check of some nursing home facilities, The Herald
found no evidence of intentional fraud involving absentee
ballots. But the survey did show irregularities.
Perhaps the most unusual episode occurred at Regents Park at
Aventura, where a social services director, eager to involve
residents in the election, dealt out absentee ballots like
greeting cards.
Elizabeth Wilkie-Acebo, 34, said she had more than enough ballots
to spare because several voters received multiple absentee
ballots.
``Sometimes we got up to three ballots per person,'' she said.
``If we needed an extra ballot we would use one of those.''
Gisela Salas, assistant Miami-Dade supervisor of elections, said
she would investigate the case. But other elections departments
said they routinely mail several ballots to absentee voters for
separate elections such as primaries or runoffs.
CONVERTING BALLOTS
Wilkie-Acebo said she crossed out or covered the original
elections department box bearing the voter's name and address and
replaced it with the name of whoever felt like voting that day,
even if that person had not requested an absentee ballot.
That's what happened in at least three instances involving
residents Mary Spector, Dorothy Bressler and Betty Grandis and
nursing home employee Angelique Voltaire.
Miami-Dade election officials intercepted the ballots and
declared them illegal on the ground that the individuals
returning the ballots had not ordered them.
In all, Miami-Dade elections officials rejected at least 14
ballots that were returned by people who did not request them.
The most striking case involved the absentee ballot sent to Mary
Spector, who died Oct. 20. Grandis used the ballot, perhaps
after Spector's death.
1 VOTER, 2 VOTES
In the case involving double votes in Broward and Miami-Dade,
neither voter recalled voting, but both received assistance from
nursing home workers in casting ballots.
When asked about his absentee ballots, Joseph Eikenberry, a
retired banker living at the Claridge House, a skilled-nursing
and rehabilitation center near North Miami, said he thought he'd
voted at the polls.
The other double voter, Thomas Maher, an 89-year-old retired
night security guard for New York's Chase Manhattan bank, was
appalled when told he had voted twice.
``No, I couldn't have,'' Maher said from his room at Palm Garden
of North Miami Beach nursing home. ``I'm an honest citizen.''
Maher's wife, Miriam, said he has Alzheimer's and went to live at
Palm Garden after he repeatedly wandered out of their Hollywood
apartment.
Maher's wife, who helped him vote with the Broward ballot, was
also surprised about the extra vote in Dade.
During an October visit with her husband, she said she saw a
Miami-Dade voter's registration card in a drawer, one the nursing
home helped him get after he moved in. Miriam grabbed it,
erroneously thinking that if she took it, he couldn't use it. She
also asked him if he had voted in Dade and he said he had not.
``I took it out and said `Tommy, that's no good. That's no good
because you voted already.' '' Miriam Maher said, waving the
Miami-Dade County voter registration card she keeps in an orange
bowl in her Hollywood kitchen.
But it was too late. The nursing home had already assisted Maher
in requesting an absentee ballot from Dade. Maher was playing
bingo with other residents when he was pulled out along with a
few others to vote, said the witness to his ballot Kenneth Porter
-- a volunteer with the Democratic Party who visited Palm Garden
to get out the vote.
TOO CONFUSED
In other facilities, Herald reporters found people who could not
remember voting and appeared confused when asked about the
electoral process. Records showed these people cast absentee
ballots in the Nov. 7 election.
At Archbishop Carroll Manor, an independent living facility run
by the Archdiocese of Miami, an 86-year-old woman said someone
brought her a ballot, but she couldn't remember who. First she
said it was a man, then that it was a woman.
When asked how she returned her ballot to the elections office
she said: ``I don't know. Maybe it's in my bedroom.'' And when
asked who witnessed the ballot, she replied: ``I don't know.
The cat went out to eat.''
At Southpointe Manor, a nursing home in South Beach, an
80-year-old woman shook, then nodded her head, when asked if she
had requested an absentee ballot. When asked if she recalled
voting, she couldn't answer.
While absentee voting by nursing home residents in Miami-Dade is
often left at the discretion of nursing homes, in Broward the
elections office deploys two-person teams to the facilities on
given days to supervise voting. Team members sometimes decline
to provide ballots to residents who appear confused, officials
said.
``We are very, very careful with the ones we don't,'' said Nancy
Butler, the Broward election department's official who oversees
absentee ballots.
Herald staff writers Joseph Tanfani, Gail Epstein Nieves, Andres
Viglucci and Geoff Dougherty contributed to this report.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
=================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
