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From Florida, With Love
Youth Radio's Sara Harris is cruising along Flordia's coast today- Election Day 2004. She's interviewing Floridian youth at polling places, colleges and communities about their opinions on this year's election. She sent this blog to Youth Radio, including photos and audio clips of various people she's met along the way.
6:00 am EST, November 3rd, Pompano Beach, Florida
Networks are calling yesterday a record turn out at the polls!
252 electoral votes for Kerry. 254 for Bush.
Flashback in time…
NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:01am
Collier County Florida…ESS voting machines are not working properly. The numbers are not matching up. Canvassing board is investigating.
NO paper trail. Tom Brokaw says: “That’s just one more nightmare for the state of Florida.”
 NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:07am
The predicted voter turnout is 70-75% in Palm Beach County. Only 65% percent of the precincts are in at 11:30pm in Florida (according to the NBC local affiliate) but ABC is saying 85% of the votes are in. ABC says Florida went for Bush. Now, I would say whatever and wait until the morning, but that’s what we all said last time around.
NOVEMBER 2ND
So let’s visit some folks in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. At the University of Miami, people are still in line to vote. They got there by the 7pm deadline only to find that there were five voting machines online. Can we call Florida before their votes are cast? (hehe!)
NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:15am
What is ‘this year’s Florida?’ all the newsmen ask.
NOVEMBER 2ND
In North Miami, at voting precinct 239, Elizabeth Judd is watching the polls for Voices of Working Families. She compares this moment in U.S. history to the end of Apartheid in South Africa.
Listen to an audio clip of Elizabeth
NOVEMBER 2ND
Tony Terry is 19. He’s voting for the first time at precinct 239.
Listen to an audio clip of Tony
NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:22am
“Four more years!” Now NBC is calling Florida for Bush. I can smell the lawsuits in the air. The funny thing is, even if there is good reason to challenge votes not counted, I have a feeling it's a practice that will now be laughed at.
Did you know that the Elections Supervisor and Palm Beach County elections board had dozens of class-action lawsuits filed against them in 2000? Maybe I’ll drop in on some of those plaintiffs.
NOVEMBER 2ND
Now we’re on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach… where Tia Roberts says Kerry is the man with the plan.
 NOVEMBER 2ND
Cameron is 22 years old. I met him at the Delray Beach Community Store, just off the exit of the I95.
Listen to an audio clip of Cameron
NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:27am
Miami has a new mayor, Carlos Alvarez.
NOVEMBER 3RD: 12:30am
Absentee ballots in Florida are still not in. Most of them are supposedly from voters in the military. I wonder how they will vote.
NOVEMBER 2ND
Ana and Nick are friends from West Palm Beach who have opposing views. They are both seventeen and go to high school at Dreyfoos School of the Arts.
Listen to an audio clip of Ana and Nick
NOVEMBER 2ND
Tia and Kiara have been on the corner of Atlantic and 12th Street in Delray Beach since 7am.
Listen to an audio clip of Tia and Kiara
NOVEMBER 3RD: 1:33am
Fox News says Bush needs one electoral vote to win. They are calling Ohio for Bush. All the networks are calling Florida for Bush. NBC and ABC are not calling Ohio yet. We’ll see what happens in the morning- I have to go to sleep.
NOVEMBER 3RD: 2:00am
No, just kidding. I’m still here. It’s 2am. We still don’t know how Ohio voted.
NOVEMBER 3RD: 3:07am
The Republicans have retained control of the U.S. Congress.
NOVEMBER 3RD: 3:30am
A 19 year old college Republican lost the race in West Virginia for Secretary of Agriculture.
NOVEMBER 3RD: 3:35am
60,000 Broward County absentee ballots still have not been counted. The deadline is Nov. 12th.
Sleep…
NOVEMBER 3RD: 6:00am
Several states have approved amendments making gay marriage illegal.
Tom Daeschel lost his Senate seat in South Dakota to John Thune.
Andrew Card says we don’t need to let the Ohio votes be counted. He says Bush is the winner. The ACLU has filed a suit in Florida on behalf of the absentee ballot voters whose votes still have not come in.
Betty Castor is not admitting a loss to Mel Martinez for Senate Representative of Florida until those votes are counted.
-Sara
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November 2, 2004, Miami, Florida:
 Like one fifth of the country, I’ve already cast my vote...in Los Angeles...on a touch-screen machine.
I figure writing about it here is a nice non-partisan way to let you know I’m doing my part for Democracy. I’m also writing it for the record, since the poll-workers didn’t give me any proof that I voted.
I voted at the Culver City Hall office at 2pm on October 27th. I formed a line with about sixty or seventy other Angelinos, most of them women and elderly. It took an hour and a half to get my hands on an Early Voting machine made by Diebold. The impatient poll-worker gave me a little white card with a smart chip which I stuck in the machine. On the top of the card-slot, in green letters it read:
“Please wait until light turns green.”
I waited. Light stayed yellow. I took the card out and put it back in. Yellow.
I asked a poll-worker what to do.
“Just go ahead and vote.”
“But, it says to wait for a green light.”
“It’s fine, go ahead and use the machine.”
“But how do I know it will count?”
“It’ll count. Just go ahead and vote.”
I did. I’m not feeling very confident about it. I read about a group called www.papernotplastic.org yesterday. They inform you about your right to a proof you voted. It’s too late for me, but I suggest you consider demanding a paper ballot if they give you a touch-screen that doesn’t work.
 Today, I’m creeping up the coast to stop at polling places.
My destination is Delray Beach where Rudy Giuliani spoke to a group of Republicans last night.
I spent most of the yesterday at Palm Beach Community College (PBCC) in Boca Raton. It’s an international mix of low-income and lower-achieving students tucked inside Florida Atlantic University’s campus. It’s also an active get-out-the-vote site. Of the 40 or so students I talked to, only three said they would vote for Bush. Palm Beach County went solidly for Bush in 2000 and has more registered Republican voters than registered Democrats, but PBCC is an island in that sea.
The U.S. Census 2000 says 16.7% of Floridians are foreign-born, and 17.4% of the people in Palm Beach County (land of the hanging chads and the 2000 recount) were born in another country. So Palm Beach Community College is not representative of the local demographics- but it is the young people I met there that were a real international mixture, and most of them will be voting today.
 Debbi is from Venezuela and Yuri is from Russia (when it was still the Soviet Union). Debbi has applied for U.S. citizenship, but she’s still waiting for the answer. She’s 23 and thinks Hugo Chavez is a poser. Yuri has been here since he was six. He used to be president of the student body at PBCC. He says he’ll vote for Kerry tomorrow. Neither of them thinks Democracy in American works very well.
Listen to an audio clip of Yuri and Debbi
Charles Thimotha is the current student body president. Halie Cohen is the event coordinator at the college. I found them walking around with mc equipment, talking up the vote.
 Listen to an audio clip of Charles
Charles and Halie do not agree on politics.
Listen to an audio clip of Charles and Halie
But, they agree on democracy. She’s Jewish. He’s Black. Neither of them is jaded by what happened in the 2000 presidential race. They are determined.
They both say it’s not who you vote for, but that you do go out and vote today.
Listen to an audio clip of Charles and Halie
Professor Abdel Gadir teaches mathematics at the college. He was born in Sudan and has lived in the U.K., Saudi Arabia, and is now a U.S. citizen. Abdel Gadir has family in Sudan. He says the Bush administration has done better than most other governments in addressing what Colin Powell has called the genocide in Sudan.
Listen to an audio clip of Professor Abdel Gadir
 Last night, while Giuliani was in Delray Beach, I was at the University of Miami with Mike Hardy and other young Republicans. There was a homecoming pageant on the outdoor stage while young Republicans and ‘undecideds’ watching “Fahren-hype 911,” on multi-screens in a sports bar. The video is a response to Michael Moore’s film. It features Zell Miller, Ron Silver, and several soldiers who’ve lost limbs. Most of them attack Moore (who is in Florida filming today) claiming he attacks and demoralizes U.S. armed forces.
Listen to an audio clip from the audience
Michael Hardy organized the screening for the College Republicans. In “Fahrenhype 9-11”, one amputee said he felt good about having served his country and he is fine now, ready to raise his kids. He is missing his right arm below the elbow and has a prosthetic at the elbow of the left. I think I just realized why the Republican National Committee asked a woman who’d survived 6o operations to sing the national anthem at the RNC in New York. It had Elena Alvarez and I baffled. Now I realize it was a nod to the soldiers, saying, “don’t worry about coming back missing limbs. This woman has a beautiful voice. She’s a survivor. She sings for her country. Technology has provided for her disability. Democracy and technology will make sure you’re a survivor, too.”
From the ‘Democracy Plaza’ of the Today Show on NBC, Katie Couric says, “it really seems like we need some sort of uniform voting system in this country…but anyway.” Chris Matthews, “people have to decide- am I gonna go to Starbuck on the way to work, or am I gonna stop and vote?”
I’ll leave you with some sound from a commercial Cuban radio station, 98.3FM, Miami.
-Sara
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