Elections in Florida, 2002

An Oblate Story

In an area where the last two elections (national and primary) were fraught with problems of every sort (human and mechanical), this year’s November election in Miami-Dade County, Florida, was relatively efficient and trouble-free, in some small part due to the hospitality and patience of some Oblates.

 In early November this year, Miami-Dade police maintained watchful guard over the Oblate residence at Christ the King Church in South Miami, Florida.  The Oblate parish, primarily composed of West Indian Caribbean parishioners, is a central voting precinct for Florida elections.

 On October 30, six days before the November 5^th elections, armed guards delivered twenty-three new ES&S Electron Systems and software (votronic computer touch-screen voting machines) to the Oblate residence.  The voting machines were kept under locked security and guarded by police twenty-four hours a day, in eight hour shifts, until the afternoon before elections when precinct workers and technicians set up the electronic voting machines in the church hall and made sure they would be operating smoothly by 7:00 a.m. on November 5^th.

 Surveillance grew more serious each day.  The Oblates at Christ the King, Jim Flavin and John Gordon, stated that a squad car, with amber lights aglow, began its watch at about two hundred feet from the house.  After two days of surveillance, the car moved to about one hundred feet from the front entrance of the rectory.  For the final days of security, the nose of the squad car was within twenty feet of the front door.

 About once a day, when they were changing shifts, the police guards asked to come into the house where they counted the machines.  Some of the officers were as big as Miami Dolphins, with pistols on their hips.  Some were women, petite, but with the ever-present pistol, nevertheless.  A few of the officers appreciated the chance to talk with a priest.  They seemed grateful for a prayer, a blessing or a word of encouragement.

 County employees told the Oblates that the extra precautions were because the previous two elections were disorganized and often unfair to voters.  The City of Miami and the State of Florida did not want to be embarrassed again.