2 POLLING LOCATIONS MOVING

Mandarin Churches Object To Activists

More than 1,500 Mandarin residents will vote elsewhere in the May 11
city runoff election because two churches no longer want to be polling
places after problems with a medicinal marijuana rights group during
the April 13 election.

So far, they are the only two of 140 churches used as polling places
to evict the city, although a third plans to stop being a voting site
next year because of the same concerns.

The pastor of the church at 12021 Old St. Augustine Road is urging
other churches to follow suit, which could cause problems for voter
access, according to city officials.

First Southern Baptist Church Pastor Gene Youngblood asked the city's
elections office to relocate Precinct 6N after the ''in-your-face''
attitude he said he got from members of Floridians for Medical Rights
April 13.

Crown Point Baptist Church officials requested the same change after
the marijuana rights group also petitioned at the church at 10153 Old
St. Augustine Road, which serves Precinct 6M.

The city's elections office granted both requests, alerting 1,544
voters in those precincts by mail at a postage cost of about $510.

Losing 140 of its 267 polling places would force the city to find
alternate sites that might not be close to voters, said elections
supervisor Tommie Bell. But since the medical rights group won a 1999
lawsuit upholding its right to conduct petition drives outside
precincts, they can legally do so.

''Our hands are tied. We sent notices to all of the vendors . . .
mentioning it was very possible petitioners would be out there,'' Bell
said. ''It is very possible that we will have to go into some polling
places and fit in two precincts.''

Floridians for Medical Rights needs 435,000 signatures to get a
question on legalizing medicinal marijuana on the 2000 state ballot.

The group plans to hold more petition drives locally May 11, said
spokesman Scott Bledsoe.

He said when group members set up 150 feet from Hendricks Avenue
Baptist Church during November's elections, church and precinct
workers harassed them. They finally left to avoid arrest, then filed a
lawsuit a month later claiming they could legally seek signatures 50
feet from polls.

The group won the lawsuit this month, then selected Mandarin's busier
precincts for their April 13 efforts, as well as precincts in Fort
Lauderdale, Tallahassee and Gainesville.

Youngblood said he doesn't care who won the suit. He said a
14-year-old student at the church school was ''literally put upon by a
pothead and bragged to'' about how wonderful marijuana was April 13.

''That is surrendering God's property to the control of the
government,'' Youngblood said. ''You talk about rude, crude,
in-your-face attitude. They [petition group] said I could not make
them leave, that they had the right to be there.''

Crown Point Pastor Steve Thompson left the petitioners alone at his
church but worries what a more objectionable group might do.

''It alerted us that when you become a polling place, anyone can
advocate anything and that is inconsistent with what we are,''
Thompson said.

Youngblood said he has contacted other churches, suggesting they get
out of the elections business to avoid the problems he had. A meeting
between some of them is being scheduled, he said.

''Every church that is a precinct, I am pleading with them to consider
the dangers of surrendering their control of God's property for one
day,'' Youngblood said. ''My prayer is that pastors and churches will
be informed to what they are opening their door to.''