I came here as an irate citizen. And I've gained a lot of respect for what's going on. The two ladies drive together to West Palm Beach, where they are shuttled each day to the Emergency Operations Center. They sit in a room filled with two dozen or more teams of counters, each of which is shadowed by a pair of observers. Both the counter and observer teams are split by party affiliation.
Counters come on their own.
Their parties draft observers. In Broward County, counters don't have the same political balance. Elections officials haven't found enough Republican counters in that heavily Democratic county. There is no state law that specifies the requirements to be a counter, said David Beirne, an assistant in the Broward Supervisor of Elections office. Whenever possible, elections officials have to seek to an equal division between political parties.