Thinking Out Loud

By Gerard Meister

My home state of Florida leads the nation in many things: tourism, retirement living, orange juice, sunstroke and skin cancer, to name a few. One of the things that the Sunshine State is not noted for is its election results. A couple of counties - Palm Beach and Miami-Dade - are still rushing to complete their tabulation of the Bush/Gore race of 2000, hoping to complete the count before the upcoming Bush/Kerry contest, which would prove, once and for all, that Florida is no place to hold a presidential election. This would spare Floridians another four years of the jibes and late night Letterman/Leno jokes about our "spending too much time in the sun." But the chances of getting yet another recount past the Supreme Court is probably nil, so for the upcoming election we have to concentrate on getting the vote right the first time.

About ten years ago when I voted in Florida for the first time, I thought that the punch card ballot was a wonderful idea: you eyeballed the list, spotted your candidate's name and followed a straight line arrow from there to the punch hole. But, as we now know, following a two-inch long straight line proved to be too complicated a task for many Floridians. And now the powers-to-be intend to simplify the process by erasing the two-inch long line and replace it with a touch-screen computer. Hello Washington, Tallahassee, the New York Times and Michael Moore; we've got a problem!

I think that retirees should be excluded from the computerized voting unless the Voting Commission allows a grandchild to accompany them into the booth. Let's face it, in most retirement communities the handyman has to be called into the recreation room to change the channel on the television. So for retirees like me, either we are granted a G.A. (Grandchild Accommodation) or - take it from me - there's a class action lawsuit waiting in the wings to get those precious punch card ballots back.

One more thing, in the assisted living facilities an absentee ballot should be automatically granted. The only caveat I would have with that is to not allow "write-in" candidates. In 2000, the Voting Commission experimented with a write-in ballot at couple of facilities in Fort Lauderdale. In both cases Roosevelt beat Wendell Wilkie again. It wasn't even close.

Believe me folks, with a little luck and proper planning Florida can get this coming election right.

Probably.