MICHAEL MOORE TO PROTEST MISSING BALLOTS AT BROWARD ELECTIONS OFFICE

Miami Herald

10/28/04

Michael Moore, the documentary film-maker who directed the anti-Bush movie Fahrenheit 9/11, is expected to deliver a protest speech outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office at 7 tonight.

Moore plans to discuss news reports that 58,000 absentee ballots are missing in Broward, according to his publicist, Terri Hardesty.

For months, both political parties and critics of the touch-screen machines used in Broward, Miami-Dade and 13 other counties have urged voters to use absentee ballots, which are on paper.

That led to a surge of absentee requests, topping more than 300,000 in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.

Broward's elections office, at 115 South Andrews Ave. in Fort Lauderdale, is resending about 76,000 absentee ballots to voters who say they asked but still haven't received them.

The elections office is still trying to discover why so many people haven't received the absentee ballots.

But with so little time before Tuesday's election, officials will mail out replacements -- thousands of them -- today. The ballots will be shipped via overnight mail to people outside the county, Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said.

Moore, an Oscar-winning film-maker and number-one bestselling author, will surely bring more attention to Florida's pre-election voting woes.

He embarked on what he calls his ''Slacker Uprising Tour'' on Sept. 26 in Elk Rapids, Mi. The tour will visit 60 cities and 20 states in an effort to get millions of traditional non-voters to the polls on Nov. 2.

The tour will end on Election Day in Tallahassee, Florida.

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