FLORIDA'S DISAPPEARING BALLOTS

Oh Florida, my Florida. Remember me? My family are fifth-generation Floridians. We still have pictures of Granddaddy (Captain, USAF, Retired) wrestling alligators. We (72 of us) went to FSU. Bobby Bowden was a pallbearer at Uncle Jimmy's funeral. I was Jeannie-With-The-Light-Brown-Hair of 19-- and Miss Florida Seafood of 19--. My sister Linda was the best teacher at XXX County High School three years running. Great-granddaddy was the first doctor in Defuniak Springs. Cousin Steve was the cop who finally caught Ted Bundy (in Tallahassee). The Sage and I had two aides to Florida Governor Reubin Askew as groomsmen at our wedding.

We may live in Texas, but most of those I love (except The Sage and four of our five offspring, and The Sage's twin and his wife and kids, who live in Arkansas, and The Sage's mom, who lives in Waco, and my niece and nephew and kids, who live in Seattle...oh well, make it "many of those I love most") still live there. It's Home, and we visit as often as we can. In fact, we have three homes: Florida, my "ancestral" home and with such a wonderful heritage and such a loving extended family a great draw to our children (even they consider it "home," and our oldest has settled there with his own family); Texas, where we have lived for 20 years and raised our children, becoming a part of the community in ways we never imagined; and Arkansas, the land of our dreams, where we lived for 10 years as a young family so happily that we will forever be grateful to the people there and lift them up in our prayers.

So having said all that, I return to the land of my birth, youth and eduation: Postal Experts Look For Missing Ballots in Florida.

U.S. Postal Service investigators on Wednesday were trying to find thousands of absentee ballots that should have been delivered to voters in one of Florida's most populous counties, officials said.
...
U.S. Postal Service Inspector Del Alvarez, whose federal agency is independent from the U.S. Postal Service, said it had yet to be determined if the ballots reached the post office.

"It's highly unlikely that 58,000 pieces of mail just disappeared," he said. "We're looking for it, we're trying to find it if in fact it was ever delivered to the postal service."