College students seeking to vote at their campus precinct will find it harder to do. So will women who’ve changed their name but not re-registered before an election. The time for early voting would be cut from 14 days to six. Groups like the League of Women Voters will find it tougher to register voters. And citizens…
With a fast-approaching presidential election expected to bring more than 8.5 million Floridians to the polls, the Legislature is battling over sweeping changes to nearly every aspect of state election law. Supporters tout the changes as fighting fraud. Opponents say they are disenfranchising. And the people charged with counting ballots wonder why lawmakers are trying…
It’s still a year and a half until the presidential election, but members of Florida’s Legislature are already jockeying over who will be able to vote and how. Republicans — who control both Florida’s House and Senate — are sponsoring bills that would restrict the ability of third-party groups to conduct voter registration drives.…
The Florida House passed a sweeping overhaul of election laws Thursday that Republicans say will streamline voting machinery and Democrats say will make it harder for people to vote in the nation’s biggest battleground state in 2012. Passage on a 79-37 party-line vote followed two days of intensely partisan debate — a harbinger of next…
Time to stop calling the gang running Florida’s government conservative. They’re busy concocting a liberal dose of new regulations that would serve their fortunes first, and Floridians dead last. It amounts to their ripping apart election laws that have made it easier for Floridians to vote, and replacing them with laws that could stack the…
Florida lawmakers passed a dramatic overhaul of state election law Thursday night, a move that GOP legislators say will bring integrity to the process and one that Democrats counter will disenfranchise voters across the state. The measure, a major rewrite to the laws that govern the state’s elections, passed 79-37. Among other things, the measure (HB…
Having solved all other problems, the Florida Legislature now turns to the most dangerous threat of all …Voting. No kidding. The 2011 Legislature is considering, and its committees have approved so far, bills that would: • Cut Florida’s early-voting period (nearly one out of five ballots were cast early in 2010) from two weeks to one. • Bar…
For more than a decade, lawmakers have been tweaking election rules to improve on Florida’s ham-fisted history of counting ballots. This year, an election law rewrite is moving through the state House that voter-rights activists have assailed as “good old-fashioned voter suppression” and “Jim Crow tactics.” The legislation was described as a cleanup bill in…
The latest House makeover of Florida election laws stirred intense controversy Thursday as unions and grass roots political groups complained that it would suppress 2012 voting in a state Barack Obama won in 2008. By a 12-6 party-line vote, the House State Affairs Committee approved the new bill, setting up a vote by the full…
The House Republican Leadership has introduced a bill that the Leon County Supervisor of Elections calls a travesty. Proposed House Bill 1355 passed through a subcommittee Friday morning. Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho says proposed House Bill 1355 destroys the election process as it currently exists in Florida and he went to legislators…
Over the objections of county elections supervisors and public-interest groups, a bill that would make numerous changes to Florida’s elections law cleared a House subcommittee on Friday. The Government Operations Subcommittee voted up the bill on Friday by a party-line tally of 9-4. Its sponsor, state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said the changes will get…
Experts propose remedies to prevent U.S. monopoly of Voting Equipment and Election Services
In a letter to Attorney General Holder, election administrators, computer experts and fair election advocates warned that last year’s merger of the largest and second largest voting machine manufacturers has “broad-based detrimental public impact.” They outlined serious threats to national security and election accuracy. The experts cautioned the merger produces greater capacity for predatory pricing and coercive contractual terms that raise costs to taxpayers and harm other commercial vendors. The letter suggests actions the Department of Justice Antitrust Division should take to correct major market injuries and fortify election and national security.
In September 2009, Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) announced it had purchased Premier Election Solutions, Inc. (formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, Inc.), consolidating over 70% of the U.S. voting system market into one private company. In December, the Florida Attorney General announced its office was investigating the merger over concerns it constituted anti-competitive behavior that may seriously harm consumers. In their letter, experts cite a record of anti-competitive market practices by ES&S that include contract clauses which prohibit ES&S governmental customers from hiring other vendors to service, program or administer ES&S voting equipment and predatory pricing of goods and services to drive other vendors out of business. They claim taxpayers and election offices have been harmed by Election Eve threats to cut off services if local governments did not accept higher prices for previously contracted Election Day services.