Election Papers Found on Florida Highway

[The Paperboy]

Highway workers discovered hundreds of election-related questionnaires early Monday morning on the shoulder of the westbound 1-4 ramp just before the entrance to southbound 1-275 in Tampa.

Around 4:15 a.m., documents scattered along the shoulder carried an alphabetical listing of Tampa residents, their party affiliations, age, sex, home address, and sometimes phone numbers.

Each entry includes a check boxes to mark whether each person supports John McCain or Barack Obama, whether they voted and whether they need a ride to the polls on Election Day.

"It was apparently boxes of surveys that fell off a truck," said Kris Carson, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Transportation, adding she had not seen the documents and was unsure what they were.

Carson said the papers were first spotted by a traffic camera. The next call went to a private firm that contracts with the state to clean up debris on roadways. Carson said that company, VMS, recovered nine large garbage bags full of the documents.

"It was a big mess," said Michael Newton, a foreman with VMS in Tampa, said in a phone interview. Newton said he was unsure what the documents were, and that the bagged documents were all picked up and taken to a VMS center in Tampa.

By 6 a.m., the documents no longer littered the roadway.

Carson said the bagged documents would be handed over to the office of Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson for inspection.

Jennifer Martin, a spokeswoman for Johnson's office, said she had not heard of the spill but would look into the situation.

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