RUSH: Yeah, of course I went and voted. I did that this morning on the way in to work. I walked in there, it wasn’t too crowded, ten-or-12 people in there. I walked in, showed them my driver’s license, and a nice lady there at the registrar looked at me, looked at the driver’s license photo, said, ‘Okay, what’s your address?’ I told her what my address was, she said, ‘Okay, so it is you.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Okay, well, here. Sign here where the X is.’ So I signed where the X is. She examined the signature that I had just made and the signature on the driver’s license, and said, ‘Close enough, but it’s not really close.’ Then she gave me the card and I went ahead into the machine and I voted and the machine got stuck. I cast my vote for my candidate and then we got an amendment down here on taxes, property taxes, so I cast my vote on that. When I cast my vote on the candidate — it was the first option, there were only two things — I hit ‘next’ and it didn’t go there. So I hit next again, and it didn’t go there. I know people that have Windows computers, I’m used to things sticking and freezing, so I knew what to do I just hit the back button and I got my candidate page again with my vote already recorded there. So I said, ‘Hmm, I wonder if this is going to count twice.’ So I un-clicked for my candidate, I clicked back on my candidate, then I hit the ‘next’ page and it went. Then I went to the amendment, next, ‘Hit here to record your vote.’ And I did that. So I don’t know if I voted twice. Probably not because it only gave me that one option.
But, anyway, greetings, folks, welcome, it’s Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. It’s the day of the Florida primary and the latest poll numbers. One of the most accurate polls to date, and they’ve been all over the park. For example, Zogby in Michigan had Romney losing by nine and Romney won it. This is from Rear Clear Politics. It’s a Real Clear Politics rolling average poll. Mitchell Interactive, East Lansing, Michigan, and Washington, DC: Romney 34%, McCain 32%, Giuliani 13%, and Mike Huckabee at 10%, is the latest polling data. Here’s the phone number, by the way, if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, the e-mail address ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
This is a potential scandal. I don’t know how widespread this is. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, right down the road there in Ft. Lauderdale, is reporting that independents are showing up at polling places and are declaring to be Republican and are given a card to go vote. They’re given a ballot to go vote. Can I read the passage to you? ‘In northern Coral Springs, near the Sawgrass Expressway and Coral Ridge Drive, David Nirenberg arrived to vote as an independent. Nevertheless, he said poll workers insisted he choose a party ballot. ‘He said to me, ‘Are you Democrat or Republican?’ I said, ‘Neither, I am independent.’ He said, ‘Well, you have to pick one,”’ Nirenberg said. In Florida, only those who declare a party are allowed to cast a vote in that party’s presidential primary. Nirenberg said he tried to explain to the poll worker that he should not vote on a party ballot because of his ‘no party affiliation’ status. Nirenberg said a second poll worker was called over who agreed that independents should not use party ballots, but said they had received instructions to the contrary. He said, ‘Ya know, that is kind of funny, but it was what we were told. I was shocked when they told me that.’ Nirenberg said he went ahead and voted for John McCain.’
So an independent showed up and they said you can’t vote unless you declare a party so he was allowed to declare a party right in the polling place and then went in and voted for McCain. In Palm Beach County an interruption was reported at Kings Point, a south county retirement community, according to the supervisor of elections, Arthur Anderson. It’s just a little bitty passage here in a much longer story about independents. I don’t know how widespread this is, but you’d have to assume McCain is behind this. I thought when you registered to vote, that’s what you had to declare. I didn’t know you could declare or change your status at the polling place, but apparently they’re allowing it to happen in certain places here in Florida.
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RUSH: Now, regarding voter registration in Florida, my understanding of this is that registration closes 29 days before an election. That would be December 31st this year, correct? Right? We’re right on this. Nobody, nobody who shows up and is not registered with the party is supposed to be able to register with the party on Election Day, right? Now, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel says that is happening. I don’t know how widespread it is. They give one example, maybe two, of a guy showing up wanting to vote, but he’s not a Republican. He’s a little bit angry about it, so they call in a second poll worker. The poll worker says, ‘Yeah, you can’t vote…’ ‘Oh, all right. Give me a ballot. I’ll vote Republican,’ and then he goes in, comes out, and says he voted for McCain.
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RUSH: John in Orlando, it’s nice to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush, mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I would just keep doing what you’re doing, man. This is your show. You’ve been doing it for years, and I think you’re doing awesome.
RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you.
CALLER: The reason I’m calling: I have been working the last two weeks as an early voter here in central Florida so I’m kind of familiar with what’s been going on, at least from —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to make sure I heard that right. You have been ‘working for the last two weeks as an early voter.’
CALLER: I’m sorry. In the early voting, as one of the poll workers.
RUSH: Oh. I was going to say, what have I missed here.
CALLER: Eh. Not my fault.
RUSH: An early voter, working on it for two weeks! (laughing)
CALLER: Well, not everyone can be an expert at talking like you can, Rush.
RUSH: Okay. So, anyway, you’re working in the early voting system.
CALLER: I was working for the past two weeks as taking votes from voters. So I was a poll worker.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: So, and I basically wanted to call and say you were correct. It is illegal in the state of Florida to try to change your party within 29 days, just as you said about ten minutes ago. Right as I connected, you then made your point. So you are correct.
RUSH: Okay, so we’ll just have to chalk this up to ill-prepared poll workers who are allowing independents to come in and change party affiliation for one day and then vote for Senator McCain?
CALLER: Ummm, you could. That’s probably the best case scenario, but yes. What they’re doing is illegal, and in fact if that kind of behavior, if you observe that, you’re actually encouraged by a poster in your polling location to report it.
RUSH: That’s right. I would think this is a big deal. I would think that poll workers, when given their instructions, would have it drilled into them, ‘All right, look. This is a winner-take-all Republican primary. No one but registered Republicans can vote on the Republican side today,’ and yet some guy shows up and says, ‘Well, I’m not a Republican.’ ‘Well, you can’t vote.’ ‘Well, that’s not fair! I mean, I want to vote!’ So they let him register as a Republican. I don’t know how this happens.
CALLER: Again that’s patently illegal and that needs to be reported as a crime because that’s a violation of federal — well, actually Florida election laws. Yeah.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah.
CALLER: And I was briefed, as you said, you know, you can’t change the party. In fact, I thought the whole thing was kind of weird because we had the opposite. We’ve had people come and register as independents or Democrats or whatever, who wanted to change on the spot, and they’d get upset because they couldn’t. So it sounds unusual to me.
RUSH: Yeah. Highly unusual.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Very unusual. In fact, it might be part of some organized campaign, perhaps — and knowing how things work in this state, can you imagine if one of these independents shows up, wants to register as a Republican, and is told no; and then raises holy hell about it, and the media shows up and so forth, and we’ll get the, ‘Disenfranchised! Here is a deeply patriotic Florida citizen who wants to vote, has been denied by these evil Republican poll workers who we all know cheat.’ Anyway, this is campaign finance reform for you, folks. (McCain impression) ‘Squelch your criticism, Limbaugh! You don’t know what’s good for you. I’ll be patient for a little while, but you better squelch it.’
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RUSH: Here’s Jody in Lake Orion, Michigan. Thank you for waiting. It’s great to have you here on the program.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, I just had a comment about what you were saying about the election in Florida and some of the independents possibly voting Republican and voting for McCain. Here in Michigan we had an open primary, you know, so anybody could vote anything.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: All you had to do was come in and claim a ‘ballot style,’ we were calling it.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And I found it interesting, and I wanted to know what you thought; that even though Republicans, Democrats, independents, everybody could vote Republican and vote for McCain if they wanted to, he still lost by a pretty wide margin to Mitt Romney.
RUSH: Yeah, and the pollsters had that race all wrong.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Zogby had McCain winning that one by nine.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm. A lot of independents could have voted. You know, that was their chance to vote for McCain if they really thought he was a big unifier.
RUSH: Yeah, and especially relevant in that is that there was no Democrat primary.
CALLER: Exactly. I mean Hillary was the only one on the ballot here, so it wasn’t like they were taking any votes away from the Democrats.
RUSH: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Mike Gravel was on the ballot.
CALLER: Well… (laughing)
RUSH: Let’s not disrespect a great Democrat.
CALLER: I’m sorry.
RUSH: Mike Gravel was on the ballot.
CALLER: She was the only one that got any press. Put it that way.
RUSH: That’s the race, by the way, that’s the election where 70% of black Democrats in Michigan showed up to vote uncommitted.
CALLER: Uncommitted.
RUSH: So your point is that even in an open primary state where independents and Democrats could cross over and vote for a Republican, that McCain did not get a majority of them?
CALLER: Exactly, and he actually lost by a pretty wide margin to Mitt Romney.
RUSH: Right. I don’t know if we can extrapolate that because McCain has won a majority of independents for example in New Hampshire which is a Northeastern liberal state now. What about South Carolina? I’m having a memory block on how he did with independents, there but I think he was pretty strong with independents. Look, that’s McCain’s strong suit. His strong suit is not Republican voters, and that’s this is very curious that people who were not registered Republicans were being allowed to show up tote today at polling places in Florida, at least two that we know of, and get all agitated. ‘I want to vote.’ ‘Okay, you gotta declare a party,’ and so they declare a party on the spot.
CALLER: Yeah. Can I tell you one other thing I find interesting?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I was a poll worker here in Michigan.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And I thought it was very interesting. There was so much talk on the media about how people were so outraged that they were going to have to show ID to vote, and what we found was people were much more outraged about the fact that they had to declare a ballot style. Everybody was completely prepared to show ID. There were no problems about it. Nobody complained about it at all. There were a lot of complaints about having to choose ballot style.
RUSH: Why? Why would people complain about having to choose? By ballot style you mean Republican or Democrat or independent?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Why would people be upset about that?
CALLER: Because then they can’t vote in private and, you know, they have to say, ‘Gee I’m a Democrat or I’m a Republican and everybody has to know it.’ I don’t know. I wasn’t ashamed.
RUSH: But everybody doesn’t know it. Just the poll workers know it.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: No, it does end up in the voter registration files, doesn’t it?
CALLER: Well, we had to record it, yeah. As they voted, we had to record their vote.
RUSH: I’ll tell you, maybe I’m missing something, but I do not understand why that would irritate people. Of all things to get irritated about when you go vote, to have to declare a style?
CALLER: I don’t know. I don’t know. All I can think of is the secrecy. I don’t know.
RUSH: Well, you can throw the secrecy out if they didn’t care about the ID business as much.
CALLER: No. Like I said, I think everybody would —
RUSH: The only thing that explains this, Jody, is that Democrats don’t want people to know they’re Democrats.
CALLER: Well, exactly. That’s what my thought is, but… (laughs)
RUSH: Well, why didn’t you say that?
CALLER: Well, I kind of thought you’d get it first. (laughs)
RUSH: Oh. You gotta remember, sometime my hearing makes me miss some of what people say. Did she say that, Dawn? (interruptin) She did say it? Yeah, Dawn’s backing you up. You did say it.
CALLER: Thanks, tell Dawn thanks.
RUSH: I apologize. I missed you saying that. I was probably immersed in my own thoughts here trying to understand this. Because until I realized that Democrats would be embarrassed to admit that they’re Democrats, I couldn’t figure out why there would be such anger over, of all things…
CALLER: I wouldn’t say there was anger. It was just a definite, you know, discomfort. I don’t know.
RUSH: Well, that makes more sense.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: ‘You mean I have to admit I’m a Democrat? Oh, gee.’
CALLER: Yeah. Yeah.
RUSH: I see. All right. Well, hey, that’s interesting feedback, Jody. I’m glad you called.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: Thanks much.