CFE description (from their web site)

The Committee for Fair Elections is a nonpartisan state political committee advocating for the creation of fair districts in Florida.

The Committee is organizing a citizen petition drive to fix the way voting district lines are drawn in Florida. The Committee's initiatives will remove politicians from the process and create standards that will act as guidelines for the creation of fair voting districts in time for the 2008 elections.

Over 750,000 signatures need to be collected by the end of December 2005. Then, citizens will have the opportunity to restore a real voice to Florida's voters in the November 2006 elections by voting for the Committee's redistricting reform proposals.

My observations and comments:

CFE's petition drive has been going on for months now, but I was told in early September that 100,000's of petitions are still needed to meet their deadline. I figure they will need about 30,000 correctly signed petition forms a week to meet a 12/31/2005 deadline. Good luck, as there's just a little more than three months left to meet their goal.

Months ago, I met the person in charge of the CFE office in Tampa and offered, at no charge, to make an informative and instructional DVD explaining the purpose and meaning of the petitions, and how to sign them correctly. The DVD could have then been sent to all 67 counties in Florida. It would have included text, audio and video with comments and instructions from the leaders of the effort shown on the CFE web site, and from their paid staffers charged with the task of collecting the signed petitions. After initially expressing strong interest, the woman in charge of their headquarters office seemed to lose all interest in my offer, but did not have the courtesy to tell me. She kept telling me that she wasn't ready to give me the information necessary to make the DVD. Lest this seem just a personal complaint, here's some of what has happened so far during the petition drive effort.

1. One of the three petitions written and printed, at considerable expense and effort, contains 81 words which is 6 words over the 75 word statutory limit. This was only discovered by media (see St. Petersburg Times archive for August 2005). It seems that the petition writer, leaders of the CFE effort, and its paid staff failed to count the words. This strange mistake has caused some consternation and dismay. To my knowledge the problem has not been resolved as of this date. The result may be that this petition, relevant to the implementation of the other two, may be nullified before the vote. A large amount of money was spent to print the petition forms, and there have been other problems with the forms (see paragraph 2).

2. The original petition forms were flawed which created difficulties, so new forms had to be made and printed. The corrected forms on NCR paper require a firm signature to insure that all three petitions are signed, but many signers do not use enough pen pressure so their forms are invalid. There are other problems too.

3. A single, loyal, committed and hard working volunteer has worked in the petition drive for months with little assistance. He reviews completed and returned forms for errors. At the CFE office, I have seen paid staff who should be working on the daily, tedious chore of screening signed petition forms for correctness. They seem to be doing little while the unpaid volunteer does their work for them.

Considerable money from various sources is funding the CFE's petition drive to pay staffers' salaries and petition signature collection costs which may be as much as $2 to $3 per signed petition. In short, it seems that even with a major expenditure of money, time and effort by many people it may take a miracle for them to meet their deadline. If CFE does meet its petition deadline, it may due more to volunteers all over the state than to the CFE leaders and paid staff. This is a vitally important effort that should be done efficiently and correctly. More later.