Tavares, FL - Nov. 1, 2012
Here are the FiscalRangers Lake County voting guide & recommendations, followed by tips to ensure your ballots or votes are not denied due to stupid voter mistakes (which are infrequent, but do happen).
FiscalRangers.com Lake County Voting Recommendations (Cities not Included)
By Vance Jochim
Many offices were decided during the primaries, thus I don’t
list them here.
My bias is I mostly vote Republican and for candidates who are intelligent, create initiatives and exercise sound fiscal decisions.
If you don’t have a sample ballot, go to this Lake County Elections page, select your precinct and print or download your specific sample ballot: http://elections.lakecountyfl.gov/sample_ballots/index.aspx
President : Romney/Ryan – duh! Or did you forget that Obama ran the deficit up to $1-trillion per year, and the national debt up to $16-billion for your kids. Don't even get me started on all those Executive Orders or Obama failing to provide security, resulting in the murder of a US Ambassador in Libya.
US Senator: Vote for Connie Mack, NOT Nelson. Democrat Nelson voted like Obama and is part of the problem we have with the economy.
US Representative – District 10: Vote for incumbent Daniel Webster (not Deming). Deming is a Democrat who follows Obama’s line of philosophy. Enuf said.
US Representative (different District): Vote for Todd Long, NOT Crazy Alan Grayson (if you are in Long’s new district, vote for him, or track him down and donate to him)
Property Appraiser: Former Florida Senator Carey Baker is the only name on the ballot, so has essentially won and is well liked. However, write in candidate Pam Lee is an alternative if you want Baker to get less than 100% of the vote! Lee was active in the primary elections and produced lots of research which will lead to reforms.
Supervisor of Elections: Vote for Margie Eaton (not incumbent & Democrat Emogene Stegall) -
Reasons to vote for Margie Eaton to replace the 30+ years incumbent.
Eaton is the ONLY candidate to receive a FULL endorsement by the Lake County Republican Party.
In MY opinion, Stegall has been in the elections department for 54 years, which is too long. Even though most people believe she has operated the department in a well operated and non-partisan way (she is a Democrat), she seems to focus on just what is required by regulations, and not being a leader in developing new laws, procedures or policies to reduce risks of illegal voters. Do you want a bookkeeper who just follows policy, or one who improves voting processes to detect and prevent and publicize voter fraud actions?
She participated in the DROP program which basically paid her both a full retirement and a full salary, which some people don’t like. She agreed to retire around 2010 in a 2005 document, but has not.
Based upon my conversations with her, Stegall does not understand computers, the website is 10 years out of date, candidates go to other County Election websites to get advice, staff is not consistent in giving advice to candidates, and the office won’t initiate computer routines to detect double voting, illegal voters, etc.
Additionally, earlier this year, Governor Scott issued a report ranking all 67 County Elections Departments, as covered by the Tampa Bay Times HERE. Emogene’s Lake County Elections department was 57th our of 67 in the survey, or in the BOTTOM TWELVE of all 67 counties for things like meeting deadlines and other factors ( see the above Tampa Bay Times article about it, or read the survey attached below). We cannot keep operating the elections department like in the 1990’s or 1980’s because too many groups are trying to manipulate the vote counts and a more pro-active Supervisor of Elections is needed. That is why we need NEW blood running the Lake County Elections office. I think the existing staff is hard working, but need new and more assertive direction.
Here is Governor Scott's report, which was removed from the internet after many Florida county Elections Supervisors complained they didn't want the public to see the report. Download Scott's soe_survey_information_-_final < Lake County is 57th.
Vote for Margie Eaton for Lake County Elections Supervisor, who has a degree, fifteen years in the judicial (legal) field and understands the need to develop computer matching and other procedures to detect illegal voters.
County Commissioner: Vote for Jimmy Conner. Opponent Michael Odette has rarely been in Lake County because he was working in the Phillipines. Odette mostly focused on negative issues and didn’t really have any plans to improve over Conner’s track record of keeping a spending lid on costs of a number of major building projects. Jimmy tells better jokes.
School Board Member District 2: Vote for incumbent Jim Miller vs incumbent Rosanne Brandeburg – This is a strange race where both are incumbents, but due to redistricting, both now live in Brandeburg’s new District, but Miller decided to run against her in the new District, making way for Bill Mathias to win the other District. Miller has been a leader for school uniforms and spending funds on technology vs buildings. Brandeburg has received thousands of dollars from the SEIU, Service Employees International Union, not ONLY from the local school employee union but others from around Florida. In my view, no elected School Board member should be taking contributions from unions where they later approve wages and benefits. Or, they need to recuse themselves from all wage and benefit approvals, and that hasn’t happened to my knowledge (Board members conveniently vote in SECRET on union wage increases).
School Board Member District 4 – Vote “T. Lowe” (which is for Thuy Lowe), an active Republican certified as a valid candidate by the Lake County Republicans. Opponent and incumbent Debbie Stivender did not receive any such support. Stivender has name recognition since she was on the County Commission for several years, and IS known as a hard worker, but I haven’t seen her initiate any major reforms. Stivender is one of three Board members that keeps voting for the status quo and capital spending, plus she is endorsed by the TEACHER’s Union (LCEA). So, like Brandeburg, I don’t think an elected official should be taking support from a union where they later approve wage and benefit increases (never a decrease…). Stivender has been there four years and the school district is still ranked a B system, so maybe a change is needed.
Retention of Florida Supreme Court Justices: Vote NO on retaining three Florida Justices, Fred Lewis, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince. You are asked on the ballot to vote yes or no to “retain” each of them. They are ALL three liberal justices who believe in "judicial activism" and keep issuing court decisions against the interests of many conservatives. Vote NO for all three. The Florida GOP also voted to oppose their retention. Only liberals still want them retained. VOTE NO. See http://www.restorejustice2012.com/ if you want to read a “Scorecard” on their poor legal decisions.
Florida State Amendments 1-12 (number 7 does not exist, thus there are really only 11 you vote on)
I used the official ballots, notes from presentations by Rep. Larry Metz, handouts from Tea parties and Florida Trend magazine to reach these conclusions.
Overall thoughts on Amendment votes – each Amendment will amend the Florida Constitution, not create a separate law.
- All these amendments were initiated by Florida legislators, not grass roots movements. Thus many feel that the legislators should have passed laws rather than avoiding accountability by placing the issue on the ballot to modify the Florida Constitution. If you agree with that principle, you would vote NO on all of them, and throw the issues back to the legislators.
- A pattern of giving tax breaks to certain groups troubles some. If you agree, vote no against the various tax breaks and exemptions.
- Constitutional Amendments are harder to reverse due to a higher required vote percentage. If you want more flexibility to reverse one of these issues, it should be a law, not an Amendment.
Amendment 1: Health Insurance Mandates – I Voted YES - this prohibits some mandated actions included in Obamacare like mandatory purchase of health insurance. If you don’t like Obamacare, vote YES on this one. Read the text and see if you agree with what is prohibited. The Democrats don’t want this passed, which may be a clue.
Amendment 2: Property Tax Discounts for Veterans who were disabled due to combat. I voted NO. Vote YES if you want to give them a discount on property taxes, and NO if you do not. Some pundits say this Amendment was pushed by legislators to get more votes from Veterans (I am one but I don’t like unequal taxes, so I will vote NO).
Amendment 3: Modifies method to limit Florida State maximum revenue (i.e. taxes). I voted YES. The current formula used to calculate maximum taxes is based upon personal income growth. The proposed NEW method would be based on inflation and population changes, which many consider to be more logical and prevent huge tax revenue increases allowed due to people earning more. This reduces chances of higher tax collections only due to personal income growth. It also means that if income growth is static, but population and inflation increase (which will happen next year), it is another method to collect rising taxes to match inflation and population growth.
Amendment 4: Property tax limits, value declines – Vote NO - This is a mess of different changes, but it grabs funds from school districts so they don’t like it, and it gives new home buyers an ADDED homestead exemption which pleases the Realtors, and would result in other taxes paid by you being raised to offset the losses. The Realtors, homebuilders and Chamber of Commerces all like this, but it shifts tax needs to existing homeowners in order to subsidize new home sales. You probably will find something you like here, but get skewered by others. Vote NO.
Amendment 5: Judicial Reform - Allows the Senate to confirm Florida State Supreme Court Justices – Vote YES – right now, most control of nominations for Justices is through the liberal BAR (attorney) association, which is why we keep getting liberal justices. By providing that the Senate also confirms their selection, it gives voters the ability to elect ones who support more balanced or reasonable judges who don’t practice judicial activism. Vote YES. The liberals don’t want this, which is one reason you WANT it.
Amendment 6: Abortion Restrictions – Read the text and YOU decide. It adds restrictions intended to reduce abortions. Democrats don’t want this, and Conservatives do.
Amendment 7: Not used and not on the ballot.
Amendment 8: Religious Funding – Read the text and decide - This would REPEAL a LONG standing prohibition on using state funds for religious organizations. Right now, Florida state funds cannot be used to subsidize schools or other “social services” programs like homeless shelters, food banks, etc. run by Churches or religious groups. If you say YES, you want Church schools, charter schools, religious education VOUCHER programs and other programs to be eligible for State funding. Some people fear the funds will go to large, organized religions like Catholics or Muslims. Other people don’t see why a Church run school should not qualify for State funds like a non-religion run charter school. This is a big change, so vote for your beliefs. I believe more charter schools are needed, so I voted yes. But don’t be surprised if other religious programs that you don’t agree with get funds. Opponents include teacher unions (who don’t want competition), the ACLU, Democrats, etc. which may tell you which way to vote.
Amendment 9: Surviving Spouses Tax Relief - Read the text and vote. This is another homestead tax exemption, which is for Surviving spouses of military veterans AND First Responders (police, firefighters, etc.). They should have insurance, and I don’t believe in constantly giving out tax exemptions, so I voted NO. There is no means testing, which means a highly paid surviving spouse would also get the exemption. This is the legislators pandering to the named groups to get votes. I voted NO. The problem with home related tax breaks is that school districts and other agencies take a hit without any alternative to offset the lost revenue.
Amendment 10: Small Business Tax Break – Creates an additional tax exemption on tangible personal property (like business machines, vehicles, manufacturing equipment). Democrats don’t want this. Gov. Rick Scott and many business organizations do want this. If you believe SMALL businesses should get an added tax break, vote YES. If you don’t, vote NO. It will reduce LOCAL government personal property tax collections. I voted YES. I am against most tax exemptions to people, but believe this one will help small businesses buy more capital assets which will help the economy.
Amendment 11: Senior Homestead Tax Exemption – This exemption ONLY applies to residents who have LIVED in the taxed property for 25 years, earn under $27,000 per year, and where the house has a “just value” under $250,000, and the total impact is very low. Additionally, the exemption is not at the state level, but allows local counties to decide, so local voters would have a say on this. Basically, this subsidizes widows and long time local residents, and I think this is reasonable since the local County must decide whether to approve the exemptions. I am a senior, but have only lived here 7 years. I voted YES, and there are NO opponents to this.
Amendment 12: Student Representation – Voting YES resolves a minor bureaucratic problem involving whether a student body president at one college can be appointed to a State Board. However, I think this should not be an Amendment but a law. I voted NO. However, both the House and Senate passed this with high margins and it has no tax or fiscal effect.
***** end of ballot recommendations ********
VOTING TIPS to ensure your Vote or Ballots are Counted and not denied due to some stupid mistakes
First, here are some video tips on shortening your voting time from Orlando Sentinel's Steve Hudak, who used to cover the Lake County area, but is now in Orlando.
Next, here are my tips:
I was observing at the Lake County Elections canvassing board today where County Commissioners Sean Parks and Jennifer Hill were on the panel, plus a Judge Neal. They were reviewing absentee ballots to approve or deny proper signatures, or to approve or deny specific votes due to mistakes made on the ballot by the voter. Signatures on the outside of the absentee ballot envelopes are signed, and Elections staff compares them to signatures on file in order to somewhat validate the registered voter is the actual one voting. If the signatures don’t easily match, they are sent to this Board to determine acceptability or not.
The Lake County canvassing board reviewed absentee ballot envelope signatures and threw out dozens of votes where the signatures did not match or were missing. The elections staff put them on an overhead projector for the panel to evaluate, and no one touched the ballots except the Elections staff, who numbered every document and recorded the decisions on audio tape. The whole process was well documented and logical, and I didn’t spot any “dirty tricks”. But, I took notes of the reasons why ballots or votes were denied, so read them and learn.
These are all my tips based upon my observation of the Canvassing Board and not from anyone else. The final say is from the County Attorney who has guidelines.
- The Elections staff is very strict in reviewing vote choices, and if you just touched one candidate oval with the pen tip, but blackened another, they forward it to the Canvassing Board for analysis. Some people would redraw the oval line, but fill in a different one, so those also went to the Canvassing Board. The general rule is try not to make ANY marks in or near any oval except the one you want. Doing so just delays counting of your votes and increases the workload of the elections staff.
- Make sure your signature on the absentee ballot matches the one on file with the Elections Dept. Some people have not updated their current signatures in years, so they are hard to match and might be thrown out. Voters who were “registered” when they got a new driver’s license might have a completely different signature now compared to the one filed then. College students who registered while in college may completely change their signature after they get into the working world. A possible relative of one well known candidate printed his name in one place and wrote script in the other, so his ballot was not counted (following standard Florida rules - the attorney was there). Another common mistake that results in denied votes. Don’t use initials for a “signature” when most likely your original signature was a full, written signature. Initials get rejected. Several absentee ballots clearly had shaky signatures printed by senior citizens, and it was impossible to compare or match those to the much earlier handwritten signature initially provided to Elections by the voter. Finally, if it is hard to write for a senior citizen, you can update their signature to an X, but then they need to sign the same X when requesting a ballot, and not print or write their name.
- Several other specific votes were tossed out (they saved the evidence) due to ballot screwups like marking more than one choice for a specific office. For some reason, several Obama voters also voted for Rosanne Barr or for SEVERAL President candidates, thus the vote was not counted for any of the votes. As a Republican, I only see Republican candidates, but there is a LONG list of Democrat candidates for President, providing more choices. The attending County Attorney said our 382 reviewed ballot group wasn't as bad as Miami-Dade County where they have to review 4000 ballots for similar issues.
- Mistakes are not always corrected clearly by voters, so your real vote intention is hard to determine. - If you DO make a candidate selection mistake, X out the wrong one and mark by it as a Mistake, or “not this one”. If you just leave two ovals for the same race marked the same, the vote is not counted since the panel can't tell which one was your actual choice. The staff and Canvassing Board did a good job - I didn't see any tricks, etc. I also didn’t really see any trends of one party over the other except for the Democrats filing multiple votes for Presidential candidates, thus their vote was not counted. Perhaps some of the Democrat voters really didn't want to vote for Obama, and checked more than one name to invalidate it. I did notice that Romney voters in the ballots being reviewed generally tended to vote for all candidates, but a number of Obama supporters only supported just Obama, possibly Nelson and Deming. Gee, do you think they were coached, but not educated about local candidates (even Emogene didn’t always get their vote, which was interesting.) By the way, the voter name was not visible so we never knew who the ballot was from.
The worst ballot I saw being reviewed is where the voter wrote “NO” in all the ovals of people they did not want, and filled in the Oval of the one they did want (which was hard to analyze, but then their choice did get approved by the Board.)
A similar review of absentee ballot accuracy was conducted last week, and probably some more will be conducted soon, although about 25,000 of 35,000 absentee ballots have been filed.
Tips for Early Voting & Nov. 6th Voting – This process is different. You fill out a form and sign it, and you provide a Voter ID. The staff pulls your official ballot from file folders by Precinct. I don’t know what inspection procedures will be used for physically filed ballots during early voting or on Nov. 6th because they compare signatures to the voter ID right at the time of voting, rather than after the fact. However, if people screw up their voting marks on the ballots (duplicate votes, added marks, etc.) the scanner will set them aside and I assume the Canvassing Board will have to inspect them also to determine if specific votes can be determined and approved.
- Make sure to take your voter ID with you. Make sure the address on the ID matches the residence address or they might not allow you to vote, or set your ballot aside. If your voter ID doesn’t match the home address, take more proof like your original voter registration card with the home address, or a utility bill for that address with your name. My driver’s license has a mailing address and not my home address, but they accepted it because I also had my original voter registration id with the home address.
- Mark your votes before voting on a sample ballot. If you don’t have a sample ballot, go to this page, select your precinct and print or download your specific sample ballot: http://elections.lakecountyfl.gov/sample_ballots/index.aspx One reason is to make your mistakes on the sample ballot and not on the real one. Take the sample ballot with you to the voting location and use it as a guide to filling out the actual ballot.
- Make sure your intended votes are clear. Read the problems described above from my visit to the Canvassing Board meeting. Focus on the reasons why votes are not approved, and ensure you don’t make the same mistakes. The biggest reasons I saw today for votes not being counted is marking multiple candidates, leaving them blank, or not being clear which mark (a checkmark vs an X) indicated your intended vote. However, most people had no problems. Only maybe 1 of 25 to 50 absentee ballots had any problems (my estimate) requiring a review, and many issues were minor and resulted in all votes being counted.
Vance Jochim
Lake County Fiscal Rangers
Chief Fiscal Watchdog
Volunteers Searching for Ways to Improve Local Government Fiscal Management, Efficiency & Effectiveness
PO Box 1042
Tavares, FL 32778
Mobile: 352-638-3578
www.FiscalRangers.com
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CLICK HERE to see recommended internet links related to Local Lake County government fiscal issues.
