Tagged: early voting

In Tallahassee, a series of proposals to repair the state election system is finding broad support in the Legislature that many say broke the voting process two years ago.

A Senate bill instituting one of the reforms proposed by Secretary of State  Ken Detzner has already been filed and there are clear signals from a House elections subcommittee that it will prepare a bill to launch the rest of them.

The state's election bureaucracy and local elections officials have already agreed that more early voting days would shorten the lines that kept voters waiting for hours on Nov. 6.

Now, Gov. Rick Scott -- who promoted and then signed the 2011 bill that reduced the early voting period -- has joined the chorus. He said Thursday county elections supervisors should have the option to conduct early voting on as many as 14 days, the number there was before the Legislature reduced it to eight.

The elections supervisor in the state capital says the Legislature will have to make changes to avoid what happened during the last election.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have filed bills in Tallahassee to increase the number of early voting hours.

Proposals by the Democrats call for a return to 14 days of early voting.

When Gov. Rick Scott recently listed ways he thinks Florida could reduce voting difficulties and long polling lines, he drew the most attention for a change of course in suggesting that more early voting might help.

But another idea Scott raised may have more far-reaching implications for public policy in Florida, and might even be more difficult to accomplish than the politically volatile suggestion about early voting.

"Gaping holes" in Florida's absentee voting process have undermined public faith in election outcomes, according to the Miami-Dade County grand jury in its concluding report. The grand jury also concluded those holes need to be plugged immediately.

At the top of the list of the grand jury's 23 urgent recommendations:

In what may be a preview of the governor’s race, former governor Charlie Crist directly criticized Governor Rick Scott before a U.S. Senate hearing on voting rights. Crist was critical of Scott for helping to pass a 2011 election law that limited early voting hours. 

If state Democrats have doubts about Charlie Crist's break with the GOP, he'll be giving them more proof on Wednesday.  

Crist will be testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Voting Rights on the impact of Florida's 2011 election law.  He will be joined by a Democratic state representative from South Carolina and a liberal advocacy group, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.  

On his listening tour in counties where voting  was a problem last month, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner got three suggestions in Miami on Tuesday.

Detzner, who's also the state's chief election officer, was told there were too few early voting days, not enough early voting sites and way too many words on the ballot.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and his appointed elections supervisor, Penelope Townsley, said that was the formula for long lines and seven-hour waits to deal with 10- and 12-page ballots on Nov. 6.

There have already been a number of bills filed by Democratic state lawmakers to change parts of Florida's controversial voting law during the upcoming  Legislative session, which starts March 5.

Most of the bills, so far, focus on early voting rules that were changed in 2011 -- when the Republican-controlled  Legislature overhauled the state's voting law.

State elections chief Ken Detzner told the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee on Tuesday that it was five "underperforming" counties that caused the delays in reporting the Florida vote count after the Nov. 6 election.

Chairman Jack Latvala (R-Clearwater) said he'll call for the elections supervisors from Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Lee counties to testify before his committee next month. "There's enough blame to go around," Latvala said.