Election a critical test for Broward’s voting chief

The name Joe Scott is nowhere to be found among the many candidates on Broward’s primary ballot.

But the upcoming election on Aug. 23 is a referendum on the first-term county supervisor of elections who faces intense criticism, and mostly from within his own Democratic Party, on the changes he’s making, from oversized voter information cards to fewer polling places.

Scott ran for office two years ago on a pledge to restore credibility to an agency viewed across the state and nation as a symbol of electoral dysfunction. A West Point graduate and decorated Army captain in Iraq, he edged fellow political newcomer Chad Klitzman in a Democratic primary that required a recount.

“Voters should vote for me because I will regain their trust in our voting system, making them at long last proud to say they cast their ballot with confidence in Broward County,” Scott wrote in his Sun Sentinel candidate questionnaire two years ago.

The real test of Scott’s promise will come a week from next Tuesday. The best thing for him would also be the best thing for democracy — a high-turnout election with timely, accurate results and few if any problems with the casting and counting of ballots. A nine-day early voting period begins Saturday at 23 Broward locations.

Voting is a civic exercise that relies on familiarity. For older voters especially, it’s reassuring to visit the same polling place year after year and be welcomed by the same precinct captain.

Scott said he took over a creaky, inefficient system that badly served Broward’s 1.2 million voters. But his changes caught people off-guard.

Some voters threw out Scott’s new super-sized voter information cards, thinking they were political junk mail. Others complained of being shifted to different precincts, farther away from home. Still others got the wrong vote-bymail ballot, which Scott blames on state mapping software used in redistricting that got street addresses confused, such as on Hendricks Isle in Fort Lauderdale.

A recent online meeting of one of Broward’s most venerable political clubs, the West Broward Democratic Club in Sunrise, grew testy on July 27 as club president Barbara Effman and Sunrise Mayor Mike Ryan bluntly criticized Scott’s planning decisions.

They questioned why Scott cut the number of election day polling places from 32 to 17 in Sunrise, a pattern repeated across the county.

“Fewer precincts suppresses the vote,” Effman said at the meeting, which is viewable online — a statement Scott called “absolute nonsense” when I relayed it to him.

An accusation of voter suppression is the last thing any election supervisor wants to hear.

But Scott’s reduction in precincts was not vetted well enough with city officials, political clubs and voting advocates, and it has caused confusion and dismay. He changed polling place locations, too.

Scott said he relocated a major condo precinct, Sunrise Lakes Phase IV, because it’s inside a gated community. Effman said it’s not an issue, because the gate is always open for elections.

Scott defended fewer precincts in an era when so many people vote by mail. He said many precincts drew few voters, and were so close to each other that confused voters went to the wrong ones. “Sometimes, less is more,” Scott told me.

He installed a special hotline to work out problems, and sent teams into the field to get the right ballots to voters. He said he’ll move Sunrise Lakes Phase IV back to its clubhouse for November, and has reversed course in Tamarac by returning some condo voters there from a church back to the clubhouse at the Kings Point condo complex.

Ryan praised Scott, but said moving Phase IV voters to a soccer complex further away would inconvenience seniors and it “did not engage the community (or) our municipal partners.”

Told of their criticism, Scott said: “None of those people came to me before that meeting to talk to me about any concerns they had.”

In Pompano Beach, state Rep. Patricia Hawkins-Williams told the Sun Sentinel that she has met voters confused by the shifting of voting locations. “A lot of people get so confused, they say they’re not voting,” she told us.

As supervisor, Scott has been accessible, and he’s a frequent presence on South Florida TV stations. If things go haywire in the primary election, he will look bad, but so will Broward. This election must go right. It’s a warmup for November, when the turnout will be much larger and two dozen Broward cities also will be holding municipal elections. Fretful candidates and their supporters will be on high alert for any kind of problem.

When we endorsed Scott two years ago in the general election, we called him “battle-tested.” He was, in war-torn Iraq. But being put to the test by Broward’s demanding voters is a different story.