Tagged: voting

Floridians will remember how hard it was to vote on election day in November of 2012.

But many will forget what was easy: Losing their vote because of simple mistakes.

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.

A prominent Senate Democrat is trying to federalize election rules in a way that would make it illegal to force voters to wait more than an hour to vote.

U. S. Sen. Barbara Boxer filed her bill -- called the LINE Act -- on Thursday. If it passes, states would have to come into compliance before the next federal election. That would involve applying formulas that determine how many voting machines and poll workers have to be available for the expected number of voters.

Just this week, news circulated that former leaders of the Florida Republican Party have admitted that Florida's voting law was aimed at suppressing the vote this year during President Obama's reelection.

Democrats in the U.S. House are clamoring for a federal investigation.

Apart from the politics and the voting law that caused so many voting problems, the Associated Press is pinpointing another reason for Florida's election day train wreck.

Basically, the state has no central formula for allocating voters to precincts or booths and scanners to voters.

It's another one of those stories about how bad Florida is at something that other states have been on top of for years:

Former Gov. Charlie Crist is standing with state Democrats in favor of a bill to fix election problems that embarrassed the state last week.

State Rep. Darryl Rouson of St. Petersburg is the House sponsor of the bill, which would restore early voting to 14 days and allow non-government buildings to be used as early voting site.

Crist's name continues to surface as a possible Democratic challenger to Gov. Rick Scott in 2016. He has left the Republican Party and remains an independent who likes to call himself "Citizen Crist."

Tuesday's election in Florida lasted until Saturday when the state was finally called for President Barack Obama. That's how long it took to sort through the mountains of absentee and other non-standard ballots.

The voting is over, ballots have been cast, and even though all the results may not be in--Florida has spoken.  Many voters voiced their frustration with the long lines and are demanding to know: why did the state shorten early voting and what went wrong on election night?  President Obama won this election, but the biggest news in Florida is the state's continued troubles with administering an election.  

If your final decision on who to vote for was based primarily on what one party accused the other of, break out those washcloths: Phil Latzman cleaned up and broke down those loaded political half-truths on the player above. Latzman sat down with Aaron Sharockman of PolitiFact Florida to discuss the senatorial and presidential races, and uncover the other halves of the truths that Mack, Nelson, Obama and Romney may have conveniently left out.