Florida: Voter suppression and Florida’s butterfly effect | MiamiHerald.com

Edgar Oliva waited to vote at Shenandoah Elementary School and fretted. The line was too long. The clock was ticking. He had to get to work across town. Twice before, during in-person early voting, he tried to vote but he had to leave because lines were even longer. Tuesday was his third try at voting in between one of his two jobs, cleaning carpets in Doral and working at an airport hotel. About 4 p.m. on Election Day, he gave up. “I had the intention of voting but there were always a lot of people,” Oliva, a native of Guatemala, told a Miami Herald reporter as he left the scene. Oliva had so much company on Tuesday.

Florida: Obama, others push for an overhaul of Florida’s elections system after long waits | Bradenton Herald

The lines to vote in Florida were so long that President Barack Obama took time at the start of his re-election speech early Wednesday morning to point it out. “By the way, we need to fix that,” Obama said. It’s not as if we didn’t know that. As in 2000, Florida gained national attention on Election Day for holding up the final tally of votes in a tight presidential race. Long lines, tardy results, apologetic elections officials — this is how it’s done in the Sunshine State. “I’m hesitant to say what went wrong,” said Daniel Tokaji, a law professor and elections expert at Ohio State University. “But the president is right, we do need to fix this. In the long run, this will dampen turnout if it takes this long to vote.” When asked about Obama’s comments, Gov. Rick Scott said he was open to suggestions.

Florida: It’s not the 2000 recount, but voting snafus and disputes still plague Florida | NBC

Florida’s struggle to quickly report a winner of the 2012 presidential election has again made it the target of criticism that brought to mind the 2000 recount. The presidency doesn’t hang in the ballot, as it did 12 years ago during the recount between George W. Bush and Al Gore, but that hasn’t saved the Sunshine State from scrutiny. NBC’s Chuck Todd discusses how Florida may be used as a model for the rest of the country to show how changes in demographics, particularly an influx of Hispanic voters in key counties, affected the outcome of the election. On Thursday in Florida, absentee ballots are still being counted in three populous counties. (Under state law, counties have until Saturday to report their total vote, including absentee ballots.)

Florida: Once Again, Florida’s Voting Doesn’t Add Up | NPR

Florida is again having problems determining the winner of its presidential vote. But its difficulties are entirely different from the ones that kept the nation in suspense for more than a month back in 2000. “It was just a convergence of things that were an embarrassment to Florida,” says Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Some of the snafus stem from changes in election law that were passed last year — but which were the subject of lawsuits until just weeks before the election. “We’d been in court for months,” MacManus says.

Florida: Still counting votes, Florida winds up not counting in 2012 presidential election | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

In the end, Florida didn’t actually matter at all. And that’s a good thing. Because even though President Obama got more than enough electoral votes to win reelection Tuesday, Florida is still officially up for grabs. No, there are no hanging chads or butterfly ballots this time. Not even any major glitches. And unlike 2000, there won’t be a recount where the future of the country hangs in the balance. But with record turnout – more than 70 percent – local elections supervisors are still trying to tally absentee and provisional ballots that could push the Florida outcome one way or the other. As of Wednesday afternoon, nine counties, including Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade, were still tallying those votes.

Florida: Absentee ballots, voting delays put harsh light on South Florida election | MiamiHerald.com

As Alfie Fernandez waited six hours to vote at the West Kendall Regional Library, she already knew TV networks had called the bitterly contested presidential race for Barack Obama. But she hung in there, anyway. “I felt my vote was important,” said Fernandez, a homemaker. “We have a history of messing up votes.” Fernandez finally got to vote after midnight Wednesday, but that didn’t stop South Florida from adding to its checkered Election Day history. Thousands of voters in Miami-Dade and, to a lesser extent, Broward counties endured exhausting lines, with some like Fernandez not casting ballots until after the national race had been settled. A day later, Florida remained the only state in the union not to declare its presidential winner, and several tight local elections still hung in the balance. Miami-Dade, among four counties still counting ballots, was sorting through a last-minute surge of 54,000 absentee ballots and didn’t expect to finish the final tally until Thursday. About 10,000 had yet to be tabulated.

Florida: Votes Unclaimed in Florida, but Less Depends on Them | NYTimes.com

Another presidential election has come and gone. Only not in Florida, where through much of Wednesday the swing state’s 29 electoral votes remained an unclaimed, though largely inconsequential, prize. One day after President Obama was re-elected, Florida, where he held a slim lead, was still too close to call — stuck in postelection mode once again as several counties tallied absentee ballots. Luckily, unlike the 2000 presidential contest, when the country’s attention hung on hanging chads, this year’s election made Florida’s choice an afterthought. “After this election, Florida is worse than a laughingstock,” Billy Corben, a Miami documentary filmmaker and avid election night Twitter user, said with a smile. “We’re now an irrelevant laughingstock.” The denouement, though, was fitting in an election season that lurched from flash fire to flash fire, beginning with a 2011 move by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to reduce the number of early voting days and place 11 complex proposed amendments on the ballot.

Florida: Allen West demands recount | POLITICO.com

Florida Rep. Allen West on Wednesday demanded a recount as his bid for reelection remained too close to call, with the tea party Republican trailing his Democratic opponent by fewer than 3,000 votes. Patrick Murphy has 160,328 votes, or 50.4 percent, to West’s 157,782 votes, or 49.6 percent, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, according to The Associated Press, which has yet to call the race. West, who warned before the election of “nefarious actions” by Democrats, suggested a county election supervisor was trying to rig the election.

Florida: After hours of waiting, last voters finally vote after midnight | MiamiHerald.com

First-time voter Andre Murias, 18, arrived at South Kendall Community Church in Country Walk at exactly 7 p.m. Tuesday. He was the last voter in line. Nearly five hours later, shortly before midnight, Murias finally cast his vote for President Obama. He and hundreds of others waited in a line that snaked down the church’s driveway and around the block. “We were surprised that it went around the neighborhood,” said Murias, a student at Miami Dade College. One poll worker, who did not want to be identified, said there were at least 1,000 people waiting to cast their ballot at the church at 7:30 p.m., 30 minutes after the county’s polling places were supposed to have been closed.

Florida: Miami-Dade will not have full results until Wednesday | MiamiHerald.com

Miami-Dade will not report full election results until Wednesday, election supervisors said Tuesday night, as dozens of polls remained open four hours after closing time. Lines were so long in some polling places, that the last voter did not leave the West Kendall Regional Libary until a few minutes after 1 A.M. At 10:50 p.m., 90 percent of the precincts had closed in Miami-Dade. That meant that at least 80 precincts were still plagued by lines four hours after the polls closed, as people waited six hours or longer to cast their ballots. Adding to the local election woes were the 18,000 absentee ballots that came in on Tuesday. Those had yet to be processed and were not expected to be counted until Wednesday, according to Deputy Supervisor Christina White.

Florida: Hundreds of Florida voters told election is Wednesday | Washington Post

Hundreds and potentially thousand of voters in Florida’s Pinellas County received automatic calls from the local supervisor of elections mistakenly informing them that they had until 7 p.m. tomorrow to cast their votes. Of course, they actually have until 7 p.m. this evening. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the calls went out between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday because of a phone system glitch.

Florida: Voting disputes: A perfect legal storm in Ohio and Florida? | latimes.com

There was the actual storm. Then there is the metaphorical perfect storm. With polls showing a close presidential race, fears have risen that the integrity of Tuesday’s presidential election could be thrown into doubt by either damage from super storm Sandy, which has created enormous voting challenges in New York and New Jersey, or the confluence of ballot box disputes in battleground states. Armies of lawyers were at the ready Monday as tussles continued over voting, especially in Ohio and Florida, the two states considered most likely to throw the presidential election into an overtime ballot dispute reminiscent of the Bush-Gore race of 2000.

Florida: Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System Can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters | Huffington Post

A couple weeks ago, when we were investigating for our academic research patterns in rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots cast in the August 14, 2012, primary election, we discovered some anomalies in the Florida statewide voter file. Upon further investigation, and after following up with some county Supervisors of Elections, we believe that we have found a troubling anomaly in Florida’s Voter Registration System. This oversight that we stumbled upon has the potential to disenfranchise registered voters who mailed in absentee ballots from their counties of residence and then subsequently updated their voter registration addresses with new information to reflect having moved. By being vigilant and updating their voter registration information to reflect their current addresses, these voters risk becoming “self-disenfranchised.”

Florida: Early Florida Voters Wait Long Hours In Line To Vote | ABC News

Elizabeth Arteaga, a 60-year-old woman born in Peru, tried to vote last weekend. She arrived to the West Kendall Regional Library in North Miami at 9:00 a.m. and waited for a total of six hours to cast her vote. “My husband had to go to work so we couldn’t stay in line,” said Arteaga. “Handicapped people and elderly were waiting under the sun. They were treated like animals.” Finally yesterday she voted at the same polling place, after waiting another three hours. Only one of three voting machines was working, and the line was as big as it was the day before, says Ms Arteaga.

Florida: Voting Rights – Upholding Democracy | NYTimes.com

This year, voting is more than just the core responsibility of citizenship; it is an act of defiance against malicious political forces determined to reduce access to democracy. Millions of ballots on Tuesday — along with those already turned in — will be cast despite the best efforts of Republican officials around the country to prevent them from playing a role in the 2012 election. Even now, many Republicans are assembling teams to intimidate voters at polling places, to demand photo ID where none is required, and to cast doubt on voting machines or counting systems whose results do not go their way. The good news is that the assault on voting will not affect the election nearly as much as some had hoped. Courts have either rejected or postponed many of the worst laws. Predictions that up to five million people might be disenfranchised turned out to be unfounded.

Florida: Democrats Sue to Extend Florida’s Early Voting | NYTimes.com

In a state where legal action often goes hand in hand with presidential elections, the Florida Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit early Sunday to force the state government to extend early voting hours in South Florida. The lawsuit followed a stream of complaints from voters who sometimes waited nearly seven hours to vote or who did not vote at all because they could not wait for hours to do so. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, local election supervisors in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties, where queues sometimes snaked out the door and around buildings, said they would allow voters to request and cast absentee ballots on Sunday. Voters in three other Florida counties also will be able to pick up and drop off absentee ballots. State election law permits election offices to receive absentee ballots through Tuesday so long as they are cast in person.

Florida: Democratic Party sues in Miami federal court to ‘extend voting opportunities’ | Miami Herald

The Florida Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in the wee hours of Sunday morning seeking to somehow extend voting before Election Day. The lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court, argues that an emergency judge’s order is necessary to “extend voting opportunities” before Tuesday, including allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person at supervisor of elections’ offices — something already allowed under state law. Voters can turn in their ballots through 7 p.m. Tuesday.  … It’s unclear exactly what more a court could do at this point. The lawsuit does not ask the court to order all early-voting sites to re-open.

Florida: Active-duty service members disenfranchised by Fla. voter purge | CBS News

Tampa-area resident and Navy captain Peter Kehring has spent more than 30 years in the U.S. military. But due to Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott’s recent purge of voter rolls, Kehring will not be able to cast a vote on Election Day, reports Tampa CBS affiliate WTSP. Florida state law requires county election supervisors to regularly update voter rolls to remove felons, deceased individuals, and those who have moved out of the county. Voters who miss two consecutive general elections (2008 and 2010, for example) are sent a letter warning them they will be removed from eligibility unless they contact county officials. Kehring, who has been serving in the military abroad for the last five years, never got his letter.

Florida: Miami-Dade to resume in-person absentee voting after temporarily shutting it down | MiamiHerald.com

An attempt by the Miami-Dade elections department to let more people vote early Sunday devolved into chaos after the department was overwhelmed with voters. The department locked its doors about an hour into the four-hour operation without explanation, then said it would resume allowing voters to request and cast absentee ballots in person. Miami-Dade had opened its Doral headquarters from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. as a work-around to a provision in state law that eliminated early voting the Sunday before Election Day.

Florida: Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters | electionsmith

A couple weeks ago, when we were investigating for our academic research patterns in rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots cast in the August 14, 2012 primary election, we discovered some anomalies in the Florida statewide voter file. Upon further investigation, and after following up with some county Supervisors of Elections, we believe that we have found a troubling anomaly in Florida’s Voter Registration System. This oversight that we stumbled upon has the potential to disenfranchise registered voters who mailed in absentee ballots from their counties of residence and then subsequently updated their voter registration addresses with new information to reflect having moved.  By being vigilant and updating their voter registration information to reflect their current addresses, these voters risk becoming “self-disenfranchised.”

Florida: Architect of felon voter purge behind Florida’s new limits | Palm Beach Post

The Republican attorney who engineered the 2000 Florida felons list, which African American leaders said purged thousands of eligible blacks from voter rolls in the state and helped swing that election to the GOP, also wrote the first draft of Florida’s controversial House Bill 1355 that has restricted early voting and voter registration campaigns in 2012.
Emmett “Bucky” Mitchell IV, former senior attorney for the Florida Division of Elections, now in private practice in Tallahassee and serving as general counsel for the Florida GOP, testified in April in a federal voting rights lawsuit that he wrote the first draft of 1355. The Palm Beach Post uncovered the deposition while researching the origins of the law.

Florida: Second printing error could jeopardize another 500 Palm Beach County absentee ballots, as copying of 27,000 continues | Palm Beach Post

Chalk up another printing error for the beleaguered Palm Beach County elections office. In what some veteran elections officials said is the vote-counting equivalent of lightning striking twice, Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher said Monday that she has been forced to send new absentee ballots to about 500 county residents because of a new printing error. The new mistake is different — and, some say, potentially more serious — than the one that prompted Bucher to hire dozens of workers, who have spent the past week hand-copying an estimated 27,000 absentee ballots. In that case, a header was missing from judicial races, making it impossible for vote tabulation equipment to read the ballots.

Florida: Election blunder: Palm Beach County back in the spotlight | Sun Sentinel

Every so often here, in the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office warehouse, someone mutters “Bush v. Gore” or, worse, “butterfly ballot.” For elections workers, November 2000 is an embarrassing legacy. For campaign lawyers, it’s a badge of honor, more Purple Heart than Silver Star. Recently, lawyers and volunteer ballot readers have flocked again to this hapless county, calling to mind 12 years of election blunders. If not for 2000, many say, this month’s printing error that spoiled about 35,000 absentee ballots might have gone unnoticed, and the Supervisor of Elections office might have escaped new scrutiny ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election.

Florida: Lines, scanner problems greet early voters in Volusia County Florida | News-JournalOnline.com

Early voting started Saturday in Volusia and Flagler counties, and to say the least, lines were long. In Flagler, 2,172 residents cast their ballots on Saturday, according to Flagler County’s elections website. Results for Volusia were not immediately available from supervisor of elections Ann McFall or on the Volusia website. At some early voting sites in Volusia County, lines were longer than expected, but not solely because of residents’ desire to vote. “We had scanner failures all over the county,” Mary Garber, a poll watcher with Florida Fair Elections Coalition, said.

Florida: Eager voters waited long lines in Broward and Palm Beach counties as early voting began Saturday | Sun Sentinel

Early voting got off to a robust start in Broward County, where voters eagerly stood in line for five hours or more to cast ballots in a cliff-hanger of a presidential race. “We’ve had very few complaints,” Broward elections official Fred Bellis said outside one voting hall. “People have stood in line five hours and said, ‘Thank you for giving me the privilege to vote.’” Elections officials reported a smooth day at their 17 polling sites, where by 1 p.m., some 13,000 ballots had been cast. Voters were still casting ballots at 10 p.m. in three cities, because of long lines. There were hitches here and there: voters in Tamarac were towed when they parked in a private lot, a printer at the Main Library in Fort Lauderdale was on the fritz in the morning, several voters passed out in lines. But by and large, voters on the first day of early voting in Florida got what they expected – a long, long wait to the ballot box. Early voting continues until Nov. 3.

Florida: Voter suppression: Republican efforts to discourage turnout in Florida may | Slate

Tomorrow, as the sun rises, Bishop Victor Curry of New Birth Baptist Church will wake up and race to the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown. At 7 a.m., he will help lead south Florida’s first early-vote rally. As soon as he can, he will hotfoot it to the South Dade Regional Library, 30-odd minutes away, for the day’s second early-vote rally. He will find some way to flee in time to make the start of the EBA Higher Education Awareness and Dropout Prevention Initiative in Miami Gardens, the heart of black south Florida, and take the stage next to Rev. Al Sharpton. Then back on the road, north to Broward County.
The plan, coordinated by at least 150 black pastors, is called “Operation Lemonade.” On Wednesday, I visited New Birth, parking near the van that promotes his radio talk show, and finding Curry’s office in the sprawling, 10-year-old gated complex. Outside the chapel, there’s a signed message from President Obama congratulating Curry on the church’s anniversary. Inside Curry’s office, there are multiple pictures commemorating his meetings with Sharpton and with Bill Clinton, next to his lifetime membership plaque from the NAACP, and a picture from election night 2008. That year, churches got two whole weeks to turn out the early vote. This year they get one.

Florida: Why Florida Should Not Be the “Next Florida”: Fixing the Debacle In Palm Beach County | Election Law @ Moritz

There’s a storm brewing in the Sunshine State, and once again Palm Beach County is at the center of the turmoil. The problem arises because of a ballot printing error on absentee ballots in Palm Beach County.The County contracted with an Arizona firm to produce the ballots, and the firm printed about 60,000 absentee ballots before anyone noticed the error: all of the races had a “header” over each section of the ballot except for the section for Judicial Retention elections. For example, before listing the presidential candidates, the ballot says “President and Vice President” in both English and Spanish in all capital letters and in boldface type. The Judicial Retention portion of the ballot, however, lists the candidates without any identifying header. Palm Beach County mailed out thousands of these absentee ballots to voters before catching the mistake.

Florida: Ion Sancho shows feds bogus mail sent to Florida voters | tallahassee.com

Several Leon County voters recently received scam letters purportedly sent by the Supervisor of Elections Office calling into question their citizenship and their ability to vote in the Nov. 6 general election. Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said three voters contacted him Monday after receiving the letters, which were written on bogus Supervisor of Elections letterhead and mailed from Seattle, Wash. Sancho said he turned them over to federal prosecutors Monday to investigate as possible mail fraud. “This is just a silly, stupid trick that I hope someone gets caught for,” Sancho said.

Florida: Palm Beach County ballot flaw causes another recount | Tampa Bay Times

It’s a ballot recount in a tight presidential race that invites easy comparisons to the electoral crisis of 2000. About 27,000 absentee ballots can’t be digitally scanned because of a recently discovered design flaw. Elections workers began Monday duplicating the markings from bad ballots to new ones so that the votes could be recorded, an effort that has led some to question the accuracy of results. And it’s all happening in Palm Beach County. “By now, questions can be asked about why these type of problems keep happening in this one county,” said Ed Foley, an Ohio State University law professor and expert on election law.

Florida: Does Your Vote Count? The Recount Test | CBS4

In the sleepy West Coast Florida town of Inverness, as horses graze and Spanish moss hangs still on a breezeless summer day, an elections experiment was about to get underway. Lightening fast computer scanners, locked up ballots and a team of computer scientists from Boston, embarked on a first ever mission to verify that the votes cast in the August, Citrus County primary, are correct. “Believe me we are not looking for trouble but we want to verify the results independently,” said Susan Gill, supervisor of elections in Citrus County. She is one of 7 county supervisors across Florida, who agreed to allow a number of their elections to be part of the first large scale attempt to independently verify elections cast on paper ballots.