Some people like to keep their voting preferences private, but if you’re proud to show who you support, we have some good news for you: you can wear hats, t-shirts, buttons and other paraphernalia when voting.
Voter Orlando Machado had to teach that lesson this morning to the poll workers at the Miami Lakes-area precinct he’s been going to for more than 35 years.
When the registered Republican walked into Sunrise Presbyterian Church wearing his red Make America Great Again hat he said four poll workers “jumped up and came towards me. I felt attacked.”
Machado, a 65-year-old CPA dealing lately in real estate, said they told him hats like his weren’t allowed.
He said they were wrong, telling them, “This is clear. Please check with your supervisors.”
But they insisted, he said, telling him, “‘No sir. You got to get out.’ So I went to my car, dropped the hat, and come back in and I voted because I was not going to let them rob me of my constitutional right. But I kept complaining.”
Eventually, the apparent leader of the pack of poll workers called into county elections headquarters and found out Machado was, indeed, correct.
“He called in and said, ‘No, you’re right. So I went back to my car, picked up my hat and I asked, ‘Don’t you think you guys owe me an apology?.’ They said absolutely not,” Machado recounted.
The county tells us voters are allowed to bring paraphernalia — such as hats, buttons, t-shirts — into polling places when they vote. But you can’t carry signs or hand out pamphlets or otherwise solicit others’ votes once you’re within 150 feet of the polling site.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
