This diary is mainly for Florida voters. If you know a Florida voter- GET THE WORD OUT. SIGN THE OUTSIDE ENVELOPE. I can't be any plainer than that. Without a signature it will not be counted.
The Absentee Ballots must be received by the Main Office of the Supervisor of Elections by 7:00 p.m. on Election Day in order to be counted. Branch offices close at 5:00 p.m. on Election Day. until Tuesday. Voted Absentee Ballots cannot be turned in at the polls. These instructions are from the Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections. As to the headline see flip side.
The canvassing board is not counting the ballots yet. They are only reviewing the outside envelopes. It is the first step. Again the outside envelope has to be signed by the voter. The reviewing of the outside ballots will continue on Monday. Again the ballots themselves are not being tabulated.
A very close friend served as the Democratic poll watcher. "The" as in single Democratic poll watcher for the absentee ballots. There were 3 Republicans. About 370 ballots have been rejected by the canvassing board.
The board is made up of a loca judge (who ran for public defender and lost as a Democrat in 1980), Arthur Anderson (Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections) and a 3rd party I didn't get the name of. So far about 260 were rejected for failure to sign the outside envelope. A handicapped person was told (incorrectly) to have their husband write a letter explaining she couldn't sign the outside envelope, so he signed it for her. Her ballot was rejected. One of my neighbors failed to sign the goddam envelope. Her ballot was rejected. I think she is a Republican for what it is worth, but we are not friendly (putting it mildly).
Another 90 were rejected because the signatures weren't even close to the signature on file. My friend reports the judges are being fair, and that the GOP poll watchers were being aggresive as possible.
Update: to Keep numbers in perspective, I have since been told about 30,000 absentee ballots have been turned in out of 60,000 or so that were requested. Therefore 350 rejected is about 1%. which is actually pretty good since I heard on Diane Rehmn that about 10% of absentee ballots are rejected on average.