Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller’s Personal Web Site

BRADENTON, FLORIDA — You’d expect a state whose voters chose Bush over Kerry to reject an increase in the minimum wage, but a Florida ballot measure that raised it by a dollar an hour was made into law by a three-to-one margin despite opposition by both President Bush and Governor Bush. And we’ve seen many instances of “conservative” Floridians volunteering to pay extra taxes to get better schools and other services, not to mention a level of social tolerance that is amazing when you look at the huge number of megachurches around here.

In Manatee County, not far from the Bradenton city limits, you’ll find Palms of Manasota, which bills itself as “America’s 1st Gay and Lesbian Retirement Community.” It’s been here, happily unmolested, since 1997, growing a little bit each year, and among the amenites it advertises are the “small town charm” of nearby Palmetto and the local tradition of strong support for the arts.

This is a “conservative” area in that it tends to vote heavily Republican. At the same time, it is tolerant of racial and lifestyle diversity, and a local add-on sales tax that supports our schools was passed by a ballot initiative margin nearly as large as the statewide one that increased the minimum wage. There was a flap, for a while, about the Manatee school board wanting to discriminate against non-Christians by opening their meetings with sectarian prayers, but in the end the bigots were forced to give up their fight.

Now Florida is getting hit with a wave of baby-boom early retirees and working empty-nesters whose voting patterns here will probably lean toward fiscal conservatism but who will also support the essentially libertarian position that the government should stay out of people’s personal lives as much as possible. At the same time, this new group of Florida voters will probably be more environmentally concerned than the current population.

These patterns are likely because of the kind of people who move to Florida. Many want to live inexpensively, which despite an unhealthy real estate boom over the last few years is still easier to do in Florida than in many parts of the country at least in part because this is a low-tax state. On the personal freedom front, Florida tends to attract restless people who want to lives their own lives their own ways. I believe many have an attitude along the lines of, “Hey! The kids are grown, now it’s time for us to do what we want, and if that includes smoking a joint now and then, it’s nobody’s business but ours.” As far as environmentalism, a major reason people move here is to enjoy the climate and to stay outdoors as much as possible, which means they don’t want every square foot of the state covered with Wal-Marts, look-alike housing developments, high-rise condoms, and tacky strip malls. So no-growth movements are big here, despite the hypocrisy inherent in the fact that so many of them are led by recent arrivals who wouldn’t be able to live here if someone hadn’t already built places for them to live, shop, and play.

There seems to be general agreement among the populace, not only in Florida, that we want to live safe, fume-free lives in places that are reasonably scenic, surrounded by well-educated, productive neighbors, with convenient shopping and entertainment but with wilderness space nearby and accessible. We want medical care when we’re sick, but we’re (rightfully) scared of its cost, which is rising faster than any other item in our budgets. We want a healthy economy, but we want it for us — and by “us” I mean the 90% of Americans for whom work or work-derived pensions are the bulk of our incomes. When we are told that the economy is doing fine while at the same time we are worried about our jobs, and half the people we know who have lost their jobs have been forced to take new ones at lower pay, we scratch our heads and wonder who decides what makes an economy healthy.

We Americans are a mass of political contradictions, especially in Florida. We want the cops and other government nosies to leave us alone, but we want strict laws that keep other people from doing things we don’t like. We want the benefits of civilization and the infrastructure that goes along with it but we also want pastoral scenery. We want SUVs but we also want energy independence. We want tolerance, but don’t want to see behavior that differs too much from our own — at least by the people who live near us.

The end result is that most of us are neither “liberal” nor “conservative” in the old sense. The major political parties don’t seem to have caught on to this yet. It will be interesting to see how they transform themselves when they do.

I can’t speak for the whole state, but at Precinct 41 in Bradenton, Florida, where I was a Democratic Party pollwatcher, voting was smooth, the count was correct, and there were no attempts to intimidate minority voters. Precinct 41 was one of the “minority-majority” precincts where Republican shenanigans were considered likely. That’s why I was there, along with two lawyers, carefully observing every step of the voting process. There were Republican pollwatchers, too, but they basically sat around and did nothing. They were there because they got paid $45 for each 3-hour “shift” they put in, and did as little as possible for their money. The Democrats did not get paid, but were there as volunteers. And even though it may not matter in the larger scheme of things, Democrats won big in this precinct.

Very few people were kept from casting votes here. One was turned away because she had only registered to vote for the first time two weeks ago, well after the cutoff date for this election. One had moved to Bradenton from Tampa last week and hadn’t reregistered or filed an address change. Several others had moved locally and were still on the voter rolls in their old precincts. They were either sent to their old precincts or were allowed to fill out address changes on the spot and swear or affirm that their new addresses were correct.

The machine worked fine

Manatee County, where Bradenton is located, uses OCR voting machines. They are simple, reliable, and leave a complete “paper” record of every vote. The election clerks had no trouble setting up the one in Precinct 41. This doesn’t mean every vote was problem-free; eight ballots (out of 221 votes cast in person at Precinct 41) were “spoiled” by voters who made marks where they didn’t mean to make them. Those voters immediately got new ballots. The mismarked ones were folded (so they couldn’t be run through the machine) and put in “spoiled ballot” envelopes signed by two or more election workers.

With OCR voting, paper is the heart of the process. Voters use a marking pen to fill in small ovals next to their choices, just like taking a multiple-choice test. If they “overvote” by making maks next to two choices instead of one, the machine rejects their ballot. This was, indeed, why several ballots were “spoiled.” But beyond this function, the machine — one per precinct — is nothing but a counter and repository. If it breaks, election workers can call the Election Board, who can send out a person to fix or replace the machine. If all else fails, the Election Board person can remove the ballots from it (in front of witnesses) so they can be hand-counted. (Precinct-level election workers do not have access to the ballots once they are slid into the OCR unit.)

Precinct workers were all retirees. None claimed any computer expertise. But the OCR unit was simple enough to operate, and the instructions were written clearly enough, that they had no trouble operating it.

Elsewhere in Manatee County

A number of Manatee County polling locations are on private property, usually in churches and neighborhood recreation centers. At several of these, Democrats were told they could not post signs or engage in other electioneering even outside of the 50′ “no campaigning zone” that surrounds each polling place. The Democrats stood their ground and remained in every case, was was their legal right, and they were backed by the Elections Supervisor, Bob Sweat.

Sweat is a Republican, but is proud of his people’s ability to run a smooth election. I talked to him when he came around. His big fear was of blowing his budget (and his office’s reputation) over legal challenges. He told precinct workers not to be too picky about things like keeping campaigners working outside of the polling place if, say, they needed to use the bathroom, even if they had no legal right to be inside. (Florida law says that only voters (and people assisting handicapped voters), election workers, and registered pollwatchers are allowed inside polling places.)

Campaigners were required to remove campaign buttons and other “electioneering material” from their persons before entering, and were not allowed to engage voters in conversation or discuss politics with them in any way. This was not a burden except for the few campaigners who were wearing campaign t-shirts and had no change of clothing available. I saw this situation exactly once. A borrowed outer shirt thrown over the offending t-shirt took care of the problem.

One thing I’m sure Sweat is considering is adding more voting stations and people, and possibly new voting places, in the eastern portion of Manatee County, where developers are planting houses anywhere they possibly can. Voting lines were short in older neghborhoods like Precinct 41, but I heard there were long waits at some precincts out in the “boonie” areas where population has been expanding rapidly over the past few years.

Future thoughts

You may not have liked the election results in Manatee County, but the election process was honest and fair.

The Democratic Party here does a poor job of connecting with the working people and retirees it supposedly exists to serve. I am often uncomfortable in Democratic Party meetings, which is why I hardly ever go to any. I have gotten the impression that local Democratic Party leaders are much smarter than I am (Just ask them!) and that they don’t need low-life working people like me to help them set priorities, select candidates, and generally decide what direction the party should take.

One thing that bothered me mightily was that many Democratic leaders with whom I spoke refused to be quoted by name. Worse, Kerry campaign staffers here were under a total press embargo. Anything they said to “the press” had to be cleared by their regional headquarters in St. Petersburg. Ummm… okay. Let’s stay out of the public eye and keep our mouths shut while telling the world we’re the party of openness. And then let’s be surprised when we lose elections and seem to have only a fringe following instead of being a viable, mainstream political party here.

In my opinion — which the local Democratic Party hasn’t sought — now is the time to start recruiting candidates for the 2006 elections. Those candidates should be political moderates with histories of professional competence, and local offices should be the main target. The way to build a grass roots political base is by running solid campaigns for school boards, city and county councils, and other ultra-local offices. Republicans here started doing this 25 years ago and essentially took over all Manatee County politics.

The question for the Democratic Party here is whether it’s flexible enough to present positive alternatives to entrenched Republicans. If not, it is doomed to be a fringe group, at best concerned with issues most voters don’t care much about, at worst on the wrong side of many that stir strong passions.

Here in the swing state of Florida, you can barely turn on your TV without being told over and over what jerks all the candidates are. No matter who wins which office tomorrow, I’ll be glad to see the nasty campaign ads stop.

My least-favorite campaigns are those being waged by Betty Castor and Mel Martinez for the Senate seat opened up by Bob Graham’s retirement. I can only recall one ad from each candidate that said why I should vote for him or her. All the others I have seen tell me why the opponent is a lousy person who supports terrorists.

A stranger coming to Florida and hearing about Castor and Martinez for the first time from TV ads during this election could easily conclude that both of them are deceitful Al Queda-lovers.

Martinez started this playground fight. In fact, he got so disgusting in his attacks on the affable Castor that more than a few major newspapers withdrew their endorsements, and others cited those ads as the reason the refused to endorse him even though they agreed with his positions on many issues.

And the presidential campaigns: If all I knew about Bush and Kerry was what I heard in TV ads, I’d be scared to have either one as president. The truth is, of course, that both of them are trying to put forth a vision of America that is supported by a large number of citiens, and that we sill survive either one’s presidency because we are a resiliant people. And I don’t know about you, but I will not stop being friends with other Floridians whose political beliefs don’t match mine. I am a liberal in the classic (if not political) sense, which means I am open-minded, tolerant, and generous. Therefore I am supportive of other Americans’ right to disagree with me. (For the dictionary-impaired, this does not necessarily mean I support higher taxes, trial lawyers or communism, any more than being “conservative” necessarily means supporting theocratic dictatorships, holding a “let them eat cake” attitude toward people at the bottom of the economic pile or taking away Americans’ freedoms in the name of freedom.)

I understand that outside of Florida and other “swing states” TV is still advertising cars, household products, razor blades, and other consumer good. People who live beyond the reach of the presidential candidates’ biggest TV buys aren’t getting the full force of negative campaigning.

Imagine if Ford, instead of telling you their trucks were well-built and the best choice for real macho men who love country music, spent their ad budget showing you Nissan and Toyota trucks being used by terrorists, GMC and Chevy trucks overturning in flaming wrecks, and in between those images had groups of Vietnam veterans telling you why Dodge can’t be trusted to supply trucks to the military because the company sympathized with the enemy back in the day.

I suspect that this kind of campaign would backfire; that Ford would see pickup truck sales drop quickly if they ran something like it.

But this is the tenor of modern political advertising, especially at the presidential level.

We expect a higher electoral turnout in 2004 than in the last presidential election, when about half of all eligible voters showed up. This time we may see a whopping sixty percent.

This is still smaller than it should be.

I’ll tell you, if I didn’t believe I need to vote to legitimatize my right to complain about the government, I’d probably be one of the non-voters.

Given the campaign ads I see, the best I can do is vote against the nastiest candidates, not for anyone I believe will truly do any good.

Maybe next time around it will be better. Or maybe not. I have been voting since 1970, and every year the level of vituperation seems to get worse.

There are days when I wonder if the American “experiment in democracy” isn’t coming to an end. This is one of those days. Tomorrow will probably be another one.

I hope I’m more optimistic Wednesday, but I can’t promise I will be.