Dance of the Reptiles (43 page)

For almost 18,400 people in the Sarasota area, it didn’t matter whether they touched the screen with their fingers, wrists, noses, or toes. No votes were recorded for them in the hottest political race in the region, the battle for the District 13 congressional seat.

The “undervote” in the expensive and widely publicized contest between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings was a staggering 14 percent in Sarasota County.

In nearby counties where the District 13 race was on the ballot, the undervote was only 1 to 5 percent. The discrepancy is statistically jarring and more than a little suspicious.

Buchanan was declared the winner by 369 votes. As expected, Republican leaders say the touch-screen machines were functioning perfectly, and it’s not their problem if 18,000 people happened to skip over that section of the ballot.

Also as expected, Jennings is challenging the outcome in court, citing numerous complaints about the machines from voters and some poll workers. She has said she’ll ask the House of Representatives to investigate.

It’s one of the last unsettled political races in the country, and naturally, it would be in Florida, the same state that spectacularly botched the 2000 presidential election and spawned the national stampede to electronic voting.

At the time, many people warned against switching to touch-screen devices—and costly ones—that offered no paper trail. But the numbskulls prevailed, the machine manufacturers got rich, and now here we are.

Gas pumps give receipts. ATMs give receipts. Yet the most crucial instrument in the cog of modern democracy isn’t equipped to spit out a simple slip of paper that verifies a vote.

Fittingly, the disputed congressional district in Sarasota is the one represented by Katherine Harris, who, as secretary of state, ratified George W. Bush’s hairbreadth victory here and then threw herself in front of recount efforts. A manual recount last month upheld Buchanan’s slender margin, but critics say it’s pointless to recount electronic data that might be inherently flawed. When a paperless machine fails to record a vote, it’s impossible to know if that was a mistake or if the voter intended to pass over that race.

In another comic echo of 2000, the Sarasota County ballot was apparently designed by kindergartners on cough syrup. The Jennings-Buchanan race was positioned without a headline at the top of the second page, above the brightly highlighted governor’s contest. So many voters complained that the election supervisor notified poll workers to remind people to look for the District 13 race.

Another theory about the exceptionally high undervote is that many voters got disgusted by the nonstop media fusillade between Jennings and Buchanan and skipped the race in protest. Yet there was an abundance of vicious, degrading political campaigns throughout the state, and no one can explain why Sarasotans would be offended in disproportionately higher numbers than other Floridians.

According to
The St. Petersburg Times
, 13 percent of those who voted in Sarasota County in 2004 took a pass on a state Senate race, but only 6 percent skipped the District
13 congressional battle between Harris and her Democratic opponent. It’s hard to believe that 14 percent of those who took the trouble of going to the polls this year snubbed the highest-profile local race on the ballot. Maybe they all tried to vote with their wrists instead of their fingers.

A test of 10 touch-screen machines, five of which were used in the Sarasota election, showed no serious malfunctions. Jennings has argued that the testing should focus exclusively on machines used on Election Day.

If nothing else, the fiasco in Sarasota has accelerated the national momentum to dump paperless voting machines. A panel advising the U.S. Election Assistance Commission recently came out in favor of phasing out devices that don’t provide paper verification of votes. The transition would take years and be costly for taxpayers, but the integrity of the entire election process is at stake. Several studies have stated that paperless voting machines are subject to errors, fraud, and hacking.

Governor-elect Charlie Crist supports a statewide upgrade to touch-screen machines that give paper receipts, which is smart. Because the next time there’s a mysterious razor-thin vote, it could just as easily be the Republicans, not the Democrats, who get shafted.

And it’ll probably happen right here in Florida.

November 2, 2008

Deliver Us from Scandal, Lord

An Election Day prayer for the Sunshine State
.

Dear Lord, have mercy on Florida. Please don’t let it happen again here.

Not that we’re blaming You for the voting debacle back in 2000. You’re not the one who designed the ridiculous butterfly ballots that started the whole mess. It wasn’t You who put Katherine Harris in charge, and it certainly wasn’t You who caused all those silly chads to hang.

And don’t worry—we know You’re not the one who stopped the recount and handed the presidency to You-know-who. That was the Supreme Court.

The rest, as they say, is history. Not that You need reminding, but the last eight years in this country have been basically a train wreck. Iraq, Katrina, the economic crash—we’re not whining, Lord, but our nerves are shot.

Everybody knows somebody who’s lost their job or their pension or their home. Meanwhile, the government is spending $10 billion a month on a war that should never have been started, and hundreds of billions more to bail out banks for bad loans that shouldn’t have been made.

Oh, did we mention that Osama bin Laden is still alive and well and cranking out home videos? Next time You have a spare lightning bolt … Well, it’s just a thought.

Anyway, back to the election. During that long tense November eight years ago, lots of folks prayed for You to make an appearance in Tallahassee, or at least give us a sign. Apparently, You were preoccupied with more pressing disasters, and that’s okay.

The world is profoundly screwed up, and Your to-do list must be as big as a phone book. There probably was a horrible famine or plague breaking out somewhere at the same time as the Bush-Gore fiasco, and You were too busy to intervene here, divinely or otherwise.

All we’re asking now—and we surely don’t mean to impose—is that You keep a wise and watchful eye on us Tuesday.
In case You haven’t been following the presidential race, many of the pundits are predicting Florida will again play a decisive role in the outcome.

God, we sincerely apologize in advance. After what happened in 2000, we never EVER wanted to face another November when the fate of the entire republic depended on the integrity of the voting system.

The possibilities are terrifying. We’ve got 67 counties, which means 67 chances for shenanigans, careless tabulating, or simple machine failure. Heck, they still can’t run an election in Palm Beach County without losing boxes and boxes of ballots!

People are so nervous that more than two million showed up for early voting, many waiting in the sun for hours. In theory, filing a ballot this way would allow more days for the counting and take pressure off polling officials who might be unduly ponderous, myopic, or technologically challenged.

The public turnout has been an amazing phenomenon that underscores how seriously Floridians are taking this election and how determined they are to make their votes count.

But there’s one other reason for the long lines: atonement. For eight grinding years, we’ve had to live with the knowledge that it was our fair state that put George Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House and set the nation on this rocky course. Nationally, they’d lost the popular vote by 544,000, but it was Florida’s electoral votes that tipped the scale.

So, every political season we suffer stoically through a fresh round of “Flori-duh” jokes, and the predictable snarky wisecracks from late-night television hosts.

In truth, the 2000 travesty wasn’t the fault of our voters. They tried, Lord, they really did. The thousands who accidentally voted for nutty Pat Buchanan wouldn’t have made
that mistake if the ballots had been designed by a third-grade art class instead of some clever bureaucrat.

Yet the guilt lingers, and there’s no sense denying it. The throngs who lined up to vote early went there to prove something. We can never erase the dismal consequences of Bush-Gore, but we’ve got a chance to help make history without mucking it up.

Despite what the crazy TV preachers say, we don’t really know whether You’re a red God or blue God, Republican or Democrat or independent. All we want is an even break.

So please remember Florida in Your blessings on Tuesday.

Deliver us from scandal, Lord. Let our optical scanners perform flawlessly. Let the trucks that carry our precious ballot boxes not be hijacked and later abandoned behind a strip joint, and let those who count those ballots be pure of character and pretty good with math.

Most of all, Lord, let there be no need for lawyers.

But if, in Your infinite wisdom, You see a need to test the faith of this great country with another electoral crisis, please consider doing it in Virginia or Ohio or maybe North Carolina.

God, anywhere but here. Amen.

July 18, 2010

Medicare Corruption Gusher Worsens

Among South Florida’s fearless Medicare rip-offs—and there are thousands—is the story of Guillermo Denis Gonzalez.

After serving 14 years in prison for murdering a man with a silencer-equipped handgun, Gonzalez decided in 2006 to try the medical supply business.

For $18,000, the Hialeah resident bought a Medicare-licensed company called DG Medical Equipment, and within
a year he’d submitted $586,953 in false claims for supplies that were never provided to patients.

Medicare, using federal tax dollars, reimbursed Gonzalez $31,442 before he was tracked down and arrested.

Last summer, after pleading guilty to defrauding the government, Gonzalez was marched over to state court to face another murder charge—this one for allegedly stabbing and dismembering an acquaintance during a monetary dispute. He is scheduled to go on trial next month.

No one familiar with Florida was surprised to learn that a murderer had been welcomed into the health-care trades. Indeed, the most shocking thing about the Gonzalez case was that Medicare hadn’t forked over the full half a million bucks in bogus claims that he’d sought.

South Florida remains the Deepwater Horizon of Medicare corruption in the United States, and the gusher is getting worse. No other place even comes close to matching the number of crooked health-care businesses or the immense dollar amounts that wind up in the pockets of criminals. While overworked prosecutors crack down on operators like Gonzalez, the latest wave of Medicare cheats is specializing in fictional billing for mental health services, rehab sessions, and physical therapy.

As Jay Weaver reported in the
Herald
last week, mental health clinics in Florida billed Medicare for $421 million in 2009. That’s four times more than was billed in the same period by mental health clinics in Texas, and 635 times more than was billed by clinics in Michigan. As crazy and depressed as Floridians can be, there’s no way that we’re four times crazier than Texans or 635 times more depressed than Michiganders. The only plausible explanation for such a staggering discrepancy in mental health claims is
stealing—thieves in Florida are simply more adept at fleecing Medicare.

Our dubious distinction as the sleazebag capital of America brought Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Miami last week for the first ever national summit on health-care fraud. It wasn’t quite as flashy or upbeat as the LeBron James–Chris Bosh–Dwyane Wade summit at the American Airlines Arena, but the mission is nonetheless worthy of attention.

Medicare is the biggest drain on the federal budget, and epidemic fraud is the biggest drain on Medicare. Most older Americans depend on the program to cover many health-care expenses, but the system is sagging and bloated.

Experts say Medicare fraud in South Florida costs U.S. taxpayers between $3 and $4 billion annually. It’s predictable that Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties would be the hotbed, and also the venue for one of every three federal health-care fraud prosecutions.

Part of the problem is that Medicare pays claims first, then asks questions later. That leaves criminals with a time gap that often allows them to bank the money, shut down their storefronts, and scurry on before they get caught.

In 2008, Medicare paid $520 million to home-health-care agencies in Miami-Dade, just for treating diabetic patients. That was more money than the agency spent on that particular illness throughout the rest of the country combined. The feds then changed the rules and put a cap on claims for homebound patients receiving insulin injections. The scammers simply turned their energies toward other exploitable areas—in particular, mental health and physical therapy treatments.

Records show that Florida rehabilitation facilities billed
$171 million to Medicare last year for physical and occupational services, which was 23 times more than California and 26 times more than New York—two other states with no shortage of fraud artists.

For years, the Justice Department has been locking up Medicare fraudsters in Florida, yet business is booming. More FBI agents and prosecutors would help, but you’d need an army of them to dismantle all the bogus Medicare operations in South Florida.

Despite all the individuals indicted, including 94 nationwide on Friday, the risk of getting nabbed for Medicare fraud remains relatively small, and the potential profits from the crime remain large.

That’s why health care is such an appealing career move for local felons, even the occasional murderer. Why use a gun when you can make lots more money with a pencil?

May 28, 2011

GOP Won’t Let Democracy Get Out of Hand

According to a new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida voters, Rick Scott is now one of the country’s most unpopular governors, a dubious feat after only four months in office.

It’s bad news for Republican Party bosses, but all is not lost. Scott recently signed a new election bill that is callously designed to suppress voter turnout, making it harder for many disgruntled Floridians to cast a valid ballot in 2012.