Democracy waits: Why early voting has meant long lines
WHY EARLY VOTING HAS MEANT LONG LINES
Aaron Deslatte and Mary Shanklin | Sentinel Staff Writers
October 25, 2008
Long lines have been an unpleasant reality of early voting in Florida this week.
But elections supervisors say they're a problem that could have been avoided.
Back in 2005, the Republican-led Florida Legislature pushed through a change
limiting early-voting hours and locations, overriding protests from a few
Democrats that the change would worsen wait times and potentially turn off
voters.
Republicans said they were trying to treat all counties equally. Democrats said
they were playing politics, given that Democrats have turned out in greater
numbers for early voting.
Since then, the Legislature has resisted yearly requests by elections
supervisors to expand early-voting hours and locations, despite growing public
interest in avoiding the Election Day rush.
"There's no question they were trying to make early voting harder because it
benefits Democrats," said House Minority Leader Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, who
is running for the state Senate.
"I thought it was a naked power grab where they were running over people's
right to vote."
The 2005 legislation limited early voting to no more than eight hours a day on
weekdays and a total of eight hours each weekend. Some counties had been
offering 12-hour shifts.
The results so far this year are predictable: lots of voters and long lines.
During the first four days this week, a record 628,000 voters cast ballots --
53 percent of them Democrats and 31 percent Republicans, according to state
statistics.
Turnout in South Florida has been so high -- with waits of two hours or more --
that congressional Democrats said they may file a lawsuit to extend the hours.
Including absentee ballots -- which tend to tilt GOP -- more than 1.5 million
Floridians had voted through Thursday.
Lines are expected to be long today, as people flock to vote on their day off.
Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the former Pasco County elections supervisor,
said that lines are "a sign of a healthy democracy."
But they're also a sign of limited locations. Florida allows early voting only
in libraries, city halls and elections offices.
Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall, a Republican, said this
makes no sense. "Just give us the discretion to make the decisions like we have
the discretion with Election Day, when the state doesn't get involved in my
polling," she said.
The lawmakers' fear, said Orange County elections chief Bill Cowles, was that
polling places would be opened in nursing homes, public-housing complexes and
other places that might be more friendly to one political party.
The Legislature "has not seen fit to open up the options," said Cowles, a
Democrat.
Brevard state Sen. Bill Posey, a Rockledge Republican running for Congress this
year, sponsored the Senate bill in 2005. He said the limits were passed to make
sure urban counties with bigger budgets didn't keep their doors open longer
than rural, poorer counties.
"We weren't trying to keep anybody away from the polls," he said. But allowing
variations between counties would mean "there's going to be lawsuits over this
until the cows come home."
In the Washington Park Branch Library near MetroWest in Orlando, hundreds
waited outdoors this week because the library's atrium was so cramped that
voters and poll workers were nearly stepping on top of one another.
Voters at the library on Alafaya Trail in east Orange County waited for hours
because it is the only library in that area of the county.
After more than two hours in line at a library in the Ocoee area Wednesday,
Winter Garden resident Melody Pereira was disgusted.
"I think it would have been easier if I had just waited till Election Day and
gone to my regular place," she said.
Aaron Deslatte can be reached at 850-222-5564 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mary
Shanklin can be reached at 407-420-5538 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
