Source: Miami Herald and Orlando Sentinel
TALLAHASSEE -- A controversial amendment that would make permanent the state's ban on gay marriage may not make this year's ballot after state election officials discovered a mistake in numbers from Miami-Dade County.

Those seeking to put the amendment on the 2008 ballot must gather more than 611,000 signatures from across the state by Feb. 1. The marriage group announced last month it had reached the required signature count.

But a new count of petition signatures ordered last week by the Department of State now shows that the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment is short by roughly 22,000 signatures.

The main reason for the drop: about 27,000 signatures coming out of Miami-Dade had been electronically reported twice to the state.

The Florida Division of Elections said Monday that Miami-Dade County had double reported the number of voters who had signed a signature-petition to place a gay marriage ban before voters.

Last week, Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning said he was suspending the electronic filing process county election supervisors had been using to transmit the signature counts to Tallahassee in favor of submitting paper verifications.

"Miami Dade discovered the error as they were tabulating their totals for the paper verification,” Elections spokesman Sterling Ivey said Monday.

Lester Sola, the Miami-Dade County elections supervisor, said Monday that his office was checking into the assertions made by the state, but he added that the state's computer system that kept track of petitions routinely inflated the number of signatures from Miami-Dade County.

Full article: Gay marriage ban may not make ballot - 01/14/2008 - MiamiHerald.com
Miami-Dade goofed: gay marriage ban still 20,000 signatures short | Orlando Sentinel