The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner it the Palm Beach Post editorial board. They get the award for the following.

Long lines in Denver, misleading phone calls in Virginia, machine malfunctions in California. The nice thing about Tuesday’s election is that the worst of the horror tales happened someplace other than Palm Beach County and Florida.

It’s nice to take a step toward the day when it will not be a cause for celebration just to pull off a major election without turning Florida into a national joke.

In Palm Beach County, Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson corrected previous problems with election night results, as promised. In this, Dr. Anderson’s first countywide regular election, voting went off at 776 precincts without a major hitch. The same could not be said of Broward County, where voters in one Deerfield Beach precinct were given paper ballots when touchscreens wouldn’t work.

Voters anxious about the accuracy of Palm Beach County’s touchscreens will get the results of tests today on 22 randomly selected machines. The system passed a similar test in September.

For sheer Election Day disaster, the nation can point to Denver, where officials combined 200 small precincts into 55 large voting centers but didn’t give them enough laptop computers. Voters lined up for hours as systems crashed. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter waited an hour and 45 minutes to vote in the morning and, in the evening, pleaded with voters in long lines not to go home.

Voters in Virginia complained about Election Day calls steering them to the wrong precinct. Paper ballot backups ran out after touchscreens didn’t work in Orange County, Calif. But on the whole, the national system worked. This time, America — and Florida — produced the kind of election the country could be proud to export.

I don't know what planet Randy Schultz and company are on. For they apparently don't read Florida news outside of Palm Beach County.

SARASOTA -- Of all the voting problems in Sarasota County, the largest may prove to be an undervote in the closest race of all: the 13th Congressional contest between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings.

Throughout the day, dozens of people complained that their votes in the 13th Congressional District were not recorded properly. One volunteer election watcher said he heard dozens of such complaints.

Responding to similar complaints that surfaced in early voting -- that the 13th Congressional District race was not popping up or recording on the electronic ballots -- Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent had ordered her poll workers to remind voters to carefully check touch-screen ballots, and make sure that their choice in the Jennings-Buchanan race had been properly recorded.

But despite the warning, vote tallies showed there was still a large number of undervotes in the Jennings-Buchanan race -- with a more than 18,000-vote difference between the total number of ballots cast in Sarasota County and those cast in the 13th race. The race may ultimately be decided by fewer than 400 votes.

Other counties, including Manatee and DeSoto, did not have the same large undervote tallies in the 13th District race.

That was reported the same day the Post wrote their editorial. How did Randy Schultz and his cohorts ever miss that? This is just further proof of the tunnel vision the Post editorial board has. They seldom know of news happening just miles from Palm Beach County.

By the way the Post is even now reporting on the problems in the Florida 13th.

For total ignorance of a breaking news story, The Palm Beach Post editorial board is today's Knucklehead of the day.

Linked to- Basil's Blog, Bright & Early, Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Right Wing Nation, Samantha Burns, Third World County, Outside the Beltway, Mudville Gazette,