Voter suppression update: Riviera Beach

Yesterday I told you about voter suppression activities in Palm Beach County, specifically in Boynton Beach but also reportedly in Riviera Beach as well. This afternoon, I decided to go up to Riviera Beach and have a look for myself.

My conclusion: there appears to be no malicious intent, at least by officials of the city of Riviera Beach, but there definitely are some issues that were handled ineptly.

I spoke with Betty, who is the same volunteer to whom the Boynton volunteer referred in my conversation with the latter yesterday. She explained that the issues seem to arise from a poorly worded law that alternately requires campaign tables to be at least 100 feet from the "entrance" or from the "polling place." Depending on the definition of "polling place," it can be argued that no tables are permissible anywhere on the premises, and therein lies the problem.

As Betty explained it, yesterday morning she arrived and set up her Obama-Biden table on a grassy area just in front of the municipal building, where the voting was to take place. Specifically, the table was in the little stand of trees just to the right of the brick walkway in the picture to the right, and the table was facing back towards the courtyard. This was, or to my eyes appeared to be, beyond the 100-foot perimeter. Betty stretched an Obama-Biden banner across two of the trees and got to work.

However, before too long, deputy city clerk Freddie Callaway approached Betty and informed her that she would have to move the table to the other side of the driveway as shown in the picture -- essentially just to my right as I took the picture.

Betty did as she was told and moved across the street, again stringing the banner up between two trees. Soon, though, Ms. Callaway returned and told Betty that she'd have to take the banner down because it was being displayed using trees owned by the city. Again, Betty complied and put the banner around the table, like a table skirt. (It remained that way today when I visited.) She surmised, as did two other volunteers who were with her today, that Ms. Callaway's actions were not so much partisan as not wanting to seem unfair. "[Ms. Callaway] said that if we'd had a McCain table there, we'd have been okay," said Betty. "We weren't approaching voters or doing anything like that."

Pretty soon, Ms. Callaway's concern was alleviated for the time being, as an "obnoxious" McCain volunteer arrived and put her table very close to the Obama table. "What's wrong with a little competition?" the McCain volunteer asked rhetorically, with a little "sneer," Betty added. The McCain table was uncomfortably close, so much so that Betty felt it might create confusion in the minds of some voters who saw the two together.

Betty was sure that Ms. Callaway and other Riviera Beach officials were "not trying to disenfranchise voters," and that they were just "doing their jobs," but it still was troublesome in Betty's mind because of the chilling effect on freedom of speech. She noted that the Voting Rights Attorneys on site have been "great" in helping to resolve the situations, and that after having volunteered for the last three presidential campaigns, "these problems have been relatively minor." Today, the table was set up underneath an overhang due to the inclement weather (left, in background) -- still over 100 feet from the entrance, although arguably not 100 feet from the "polling place" (see the uncertainty?) -- and things appeared to be going smoothly.

So, to sum up, not exactly "much ado about nothing," but surely not as nefarious as some of the reports out of Boynton yesterday. (Thanks to Betty and her fellow volunteers for answering my questions and showing me around.)