Just received more details on yesterday’s early voting glitch in Sarasota. Rita Ferrandino, chair of the Sarasota County Democratic Party, says the rally held in Sarasota’s largely African-American community of Newtown was not specifically a Kendrick Meek event, but a gathering “organized by the local ministers” that Meek “was just fortunate to be able to attend.”
At the end of the rally, which drew roughly 150 people, a musical group encouraged attendees to walk to the nearby North Sarasota Library to cast their early votes. Ferrandino can’t say how many at the rally actually attempted to vote but says that “mysteriously, the computers went down right when the voters went in.” Many of the residents became upset over the glitch, which took the office of Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent 40 minutes to correct.
Dent told me this morning that to her knowledge, “everybody was able to vote,” but Ferrnadino says only three or four voters actually waited for the library’s computer system to be repaired. She says the neighborhood is outraged: “Nothing like getting to witness voter suppression live.”
Ferrandino also passed along some photos from the event:
