By Elaine Silvestrini
The Tampa Tribune
Brooksville

Jeannette Thomas, 45, and her husband, Raymond Taylor, 50, want to make sure their votes count. After seeing reports of problems with electronic voting, the couple was heartened to learn that officials in Brooksville were offering the option of paper ballots.

The couple went to vote around 12:30 p.m. at the 49th precinct polling place, the clubhouse at Weeki Wachee North, and Thomas says she received her paper ballot. Taylor was next in line. “They had stacks and stacks of paper ballots,” Thomas says. “They gave me mine and they were going to give him one from the next stack.”

But there was a problem. All the rest of the ballots, Thomas says, were stapled together. Removing the staples would leave holes in the ballots, rendering them unusable.

Taylor, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and the six or seven people behind the couple on line had no choice but to use the electronic voting system.

The response, Taylor says, was ”overall disappointment.”

Hernando County Elections Supervisor Annie Williams says the ballot stubs are supposed to be stapled together, and this should not have created a problem.

“There must be some kind of misunderstanding over there,” Williams says. “I will check into it.”

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