Your Guide to the 2008 General Election in Tampa Bay
[Times art: Rossie Newson]
Know Your Candidates is a special report by the St. Petersburg Times. From candidate information to the logistics of voting, you'll find it here.
Use the tabs above to view all races by county. Use the links at left to quickly select a specific race.
The Candidates
We've interviewed each one, examined their public records and candidate questionnaires to compile information for one-stop shopping before you vote. Financial information about each candidate was obtained from financial disclosures the candidates are required to file to run. Use the links to the left or the tabs at the top of this page to find individual races.
- Recommendations from the Times editorial board for general election races
- Results and candidate profiles from the primary election
Where can I vote?
Visit your county's Supervisor of Elections Website or call the office. With just your address, you can find your precinct and political districts online.
- Pinellas (727) 464-6108; votepinellas.com
- Hillsborough (813) 272-5850; votehillsborough.org
- Pasco 1-800-851-8754; pascovotes.com
- Hernando (352) 754-4125; hernandovotes.com
When can I vote?
There's no need to wait until Nov. 4. Under Florida's early voting system, a small number of polls are open six-days a week for the two weeks leading up to the general election. You can request an absentee ballot (through Oct. 29) or locate early voting sites and their hours using the contact information above. On election day, polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. When you go to the polls, bring a valid photo I.D. with a signature.
Who can vote?
The deadline to register to vote in the November general election was Oct. 6. For more information about Florida voting laws go to the state elections Web site: http://election.dos.state.fl.us
Ballot technology changes
Nov. 4 marks the second time all of Florida will vote using optical scan ballots. But with such a low turnout in the Aug. 26 statewide primary, many voters may be using it for the first time this election.
Optical scan technology uses paper ballots that resemble an answer sheet used for standardized tests.
For voters in 52 counties, including Hernando, the technology is old hat. The same is true for voters who regularly cast ballots by absentee.
But the majority of Florida voters live in 15 counties — including Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco — that adopted touch screen machines in the wake of the 2000 presidential recount debacle. They used optical scan technology for the first time in the August primary election.
Why now? A new state law pushed by Gov. Charlie Crist set optical scan as the state standard.
Voting via optical scan feels old fashioned after the touchscreen machine. It’s a paper ballot, marked by a pen.
But advocates say that makes it superior. Optical scan creates a “paper trail” of an individual vote that won’t disappear when machines malfunction.
In the Tampa Bay area, voters will use a pen provided for them at the polls to fill in an oval beside a candidate’s name or ballot question response.
Voters are then instructed to feed their ballot into machine readers at each polling place. Totals from each machine are then transmitted to election headquarters in each county to tally the election’s outcome.
But there’s a current limit to the paper trail in Florida. Only a few ballots are ever re-examined in close elections.
A manual recount — or a count by hand — is ordered when the margin of victory is less than one-quarter of 1 percent.
But the law only requires a review of the paper ballots that the machines register as either overvotes and undervotes.
Besides the three Tampa Bay area counties, the other counties that swapped touch screens for optical scan ballots are Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, Collier, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, Indian River, Lake, Sumter and Nassau.
Credits
Political editors: Joni James, Bridget Hall Grumet, Morris Kennedy, Mike Konrad
Contributing writers: Jonathan Abel, Saundra Amrhein, Barbara Behrendt, Richard Danielson, David DeCamp, Rita Farlow, John Frank, Stephanie Garry, Justin George, Kevin Graham, Lorri Helfand, Angie Drobnic Holan, Amy Hollyfield, Colleen Jenkins, Curtis Krueger, Michael Kruse, Alex Leary, DeMorris Lee, Jennifer Liberto, Anne Lindberg, Thomas Marshall, Robbyn Mitchell, Molly Moorhead, Logan Neill, Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Aaron Sharockman, Cristina Silva, Jeff Solochek, Jamal Thalji, Jodie Tillman, Christopher Tisch, Thomas C. Tobin, Helen Anne Travis, Will Van Sant, Michael Van Sickler, Jessica Vander Velde, Bill Varian, Donna Winchester, Alexandra Zayas and Janet Zink. Information from the Associated Press was also used in this report.
Online Presentation: Jeremy Bowers, Martin Frobisher, Tracee Stockwell, Catriona Stuart
Editors: Gustavo Hernandez, Robert Sitten, John Schlander
Illustration: Rossie Newson
Research: Caryn Baird, Carolyn Edds, Will Gorham, Shirl Kennedy, John Martin
Comments or questions?
Please email us at kyc@sptimes.com
