4 November 7-13, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | CAN YOU SAY “ANTICLIMAX”? Election Day in South Florida was emotional, if not suspenseful. BY MIAMI NEW TIMES STAFF & FREELANCERS M any voters in the Sunshine State who intended to vote in the 2024 general election did so before November 5, either mailing in their ballot or casting it in person during the early- voting period, which opened on October 26. Still, in South Florida, plenty of people waited until Election Day to mosey out to the polls, and Miami New Times was there to gauge the mood at the end of a historic campaign sea- son, the outcome of which stood to set the tone in the state for the lame-duck years of two- term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. With polls signaling a comfortable margins of victory at the top of the GOP ticket, DeSantis had thrown down the gauntlet a little way down-ballot, staking his increasingly far-right bona fides on defeating two of the six proposed amendments to the state constitution: legaliza- tion of recreational marijuana (Amendment 3), and the right to abortion (Amendment 4). As it turned out, there wasn’t much of a window for suspense after the polls closed at 7 p.m. Within two hours, major networks de- clared that Donald Trump had won the state and Amendments 3 and 4 were destined for defeat — though both had secured a comfort- able majority, Florida requires a 60 percent supermajority for an amendment to the state constitution to pass. The results were perhaps even starker in Miami-Dade County, which went red in the presidential race — and decid- edly so — for the first time in what seems like forever. (Broward County stayed resolutely blue, Palm Beach County a paler cyan hue.) New Times reporters had spent the day covering the various races with particular at- tention to the mood at polling places around Miami-Dade and Broward. Below are vi- gnettes from a handful of precincts. Little Haiti Cultural Complex Voter traffic was sparse at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex on NE Second Avenue on a breezy but mostly dry Tuesday afternoon. Beaucoup spaces in the parking lot, more campaign signs and pamphleteers than actual voters — so much so that a CBS TV reporter who arrived around the same time mistook us for the proverbial man on the street and ut- tered his icebreaker: “I heard there was some trouble with the state election website this morning. Did you have any trouble finding your polling place?” Imagine his surprise when we told him New Times had broken that story hours ago. Having straightened out our respective identities, Steve Maugeri made a beeline for a more suitable victim in the parking lot (“I knew when I saw her take out her phone — the Elec- tion Day selfie!”), and after admiring his tech- nique, we made our way to the cultural center. In less than a heartbeat, a of blue-shirted volunteer greeted us with a hearty “Thanks for voting!” and proffered her glossy cards. Once again we identified ourself, this time clarifying that it was us who’d come to interview her. Like us, this is Wendy Mendoza’s voting precint. She’d been on the scene all weekend and reported that while today was the slow- est in terms of traffic, the flow was steady. And, she added, there were three women voters for every man. “It was a good mood,” she said. “Women coming to vote with their children, their daughters. Every day.” She said it not with surprise, but with pur- pose. Unlike her pamphlet partner on this day, 2024 wasn’t Mendoza’s first time volun- teering at the polls. She first caught the fever two decades ago, when she heard Barack Obama deliver the keynote at the 2004 Dem- ocratic convention. Now, she said, she’s the mother of twin daughters herself, and she’s determined to preserve democracy. And equally crucial in this reddening state and county, a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. But she wasn’t kidding herself. “The Dem- ocratic Party has a lot of work to do,” she said. “Democrats have a 1 million voter deficit” in the state. “The party needs a fresh start. We have to start from scratch.” Mendoza places much of the blame on Nikki Fried, who as Florida Democratic Party chair “did nothing” to reinvigorate the moribund political organization. Though she estimated that it would take eight to ten years to undo damage she sees as largely self- inflicted, she expressed optimism that a woman like Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava might mount a successful campaign for governor. “Men have had the power for too long.” TOM FINKEL YMCA Familly Center, Pembroke Pines Maybe it was the rain, maybe the time of the day, maybe the early voting turnout — but at one o’clock in Pembroke Pines, many of the polling stations felt like ghost towns. As at other sites across this south Broward municipality, the flow of voters in and out of the Pembroke Pines YMCA Family Center was more like a trickle, not unlike the rain that came and went, falling on the campaign volunteers gathered outside but not dampen- ing their enthusiasm. Hildah Jong-Ebot was one of the handful who dodged the on-and-off drizzle to hurry inside to vote. As she left with her 7-year-old daughter, Malu — who sported a pink Inter A voter approaches the polling station at Trinity Cathedral near Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami Photo by Zulekha Pitts | METRO | 4 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | ▼ FLORIDA STILL NO. 1 FLORIDA BANNED MORE BOOKS THAN ANY OTHER U.S. STATE LAST YEAR. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN G iven how avidly Florida Gov. Ron DeSan- tis has paved the way for far-right activ- ists to challenge library collections in school districts across the state, it should come as no surprise to learn that Florida led the nation in book bans last school year. And that’s precisely what PEN America, a non- profit group that has been advocating for literacy and free expression, has reported in the latest edi- tion of its report on book bannings nationwide. And it wasn’t even close. Released on November 1, “Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves” tallied 10,046 book bans across the U.S during the 2023-24 school year. That’s a 200 percent increase as compared to the year prior. Since 2021, the nonprofit has logged nearly 16,000 total book bans across 43 states as activists, particularly far-right so-called “parental rights groups” ramped up challenges in school districts across the United States. PEN defines a ban as “any action taken against a book based on its content and as a re- sult of parent or community challenges, adminis- trative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other govern- ment officials.” Florida alone accounted for 4,561 bans during the school year that ended June 30, 2024. Of the state’s nearly 70 school districts, 33 were respon- sible for the bulk of the bans. PEN points to new legislation such as Flori- da’s House Bill 1069, which expanded the 2022 Parental Rights in Education Law (AKA “Don’t Say Gay”), directing school districts to establish processes to review book objections and allow- ing parents to limit their student’s access to ma- terials in school and classroom libraries. “The law requires that any book challenged for ‘sexual conduct’ must be removed during its review process,” the report notes. Iowa trailed Florida by nearly a thousand bans, reporting 3,761. Texas notched 538 bans, while there were 408 in Wisconsin, 121 in Virginia, and 100 in Kentucky. From July 2023 through June, the report re- corded 10,046 book ban cases across 29 states and 220 public school districts. By contrast, the prior academic year saw only 3,362 bans nation- wide — a whopping 40 percent of which trans- pired in Florida. According to PEN, 4,231 individual titles were banned last school year, created by 2,662 authors and 195 illustrators. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Pi- coult was the most commonly banned book, with objections popping up in more than 50 school districts — 20 of those in Florida. Other com- monly banned books include Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Sold by Patricia McCormick, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. The authors with the most book challenges across their collections were Ellen Hopkins, Sarah J. Maas, Stephen King, Picoult, Green, Colleen Hoover, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morri- son, and Lauren Myracle. For instance, there were 523 book bans involving 19 of Hopkins’ books. Seventy-four books by King accounted for 173 bans. In its analysis of 1,091 book bans, PEN Amer- ica found that among those titles, 57 percent in- volved sex or sex-related topics, 44 percent included characters or people of color, and 39 percent involved LGBTQ characters or people. “This crisis is tragic for young people hungry to understand the world they live in and see their identities and experiences reflected in books,” Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Free- dom to Read program, said in a press release. >> p5
