The result — helped as much by a minuscule turnout as detailed preparations — was an election that lacked all the rancor and drama of last year’s debacle.
Residents in a half-dozen cities cast ballots in non-partisan municipal races with no reports of the kind of foul-ups that dragged out Florida’s selection of the nation’s president by six weeks last year.
With only a few thousand voters showing up at the polls Tuesday, there was little surprise that democracy went off without a hitch.
“Everything just went smoothly,” said Kathy Montoya, the city clerk in Winter Garden, where only 90 of the 681 registered voters on the city’s east side turned out Tuesday to cast ballots in the District 3 city commission race.
It was a far cry from the contentious Nov.. 7 election, after which the nation waited more than a month before recounts and lawsuits ended with George W. Bush capturing the White House with a 537 -vote margin over Al Gore.
More than 180,000 ballots were thrown out across Florida because of voter errors, many of them attributed to flawed ballot designs and confusing instructions.
Orange County had one of the lowest rates of flawed ballots in the state. But even so, about 3,000 ballots were thrown out. And an Orlando Sentinel examination in February found that hundreds of Orange ballots were rejected because voters used the wrong type of pen to mark them, marked them in the wrong place or tried to correct mistakes on their ballots.
Tuesday’s elections were conducted by the cities themselves, but all contracted with Orange County Election Supervisor Bill Cowles to provide voting equipment and assistance.
In preparation for Tuesday’s election, Cowles said, training for poll workers emphasized avoiding the mistakes that cost votes in November.
First, workers were told to ensure that voters used only the pens provided by election officials. New signs prominently displayed in polling places showed voters how to properly fill in a ballot. And the signs and poll workers encouraged voters to ask for a new ballot if they made a mistake.
For the first time, election workers distributed comment cards, on which voters were asked to rate the election officials’ service and share feedback.
Better service and improved voter education were among the recommendations of an election task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to prevent the problems that plagued the November election.
Results of the mail-in comment cards distributed Tuesday won’t be known for a few weeks, Cowles said. And the number of ballots that were mistakenly marked in Tuesday’s election won’t be known until this afternoon at the earliest.
But all the attention to November’s problems probably helped keep the number of errors down in Tuesday’s races, Cowles said.
“I think the voters are more aware of how to vote properly,” Cowles said. And poll workers are “more eager” to help voters who may be confused or unsure of how to fill out a ballot properly, he said.
One of the things that confused many voters in November — ballots with 10 candidates in a race — wasn’t a factor Tuesday. Many ballots had only a single race, with just two or three candidates.
While the nonpartisan city races may have lacked the high-stakes drama of a presidential contest that brought out a quarter-million Orange County voters, those who went to the polls Tuesday said the local races and issues on the ballot directly affect their lives.
“I’ve not lost faith in the system,” said Maitland resident Bob Gordon, who took his 26 1/27 -year-old son Aaron with him to vote at Dommerich Elementary School before the polls closed Tuesday evening.
“Sure it needs a little reform,” Gordon said of the process, “but we need to voice our opinions.”
Scott Maxwell and Martin E. Comas of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Roger Roy can be reached at rroy@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5436.
