Six months after Florida became the butt of late-night jokes for a chaotic voting process that bedeviled the 2012 presidential election, the State Legislature passed a bill on Friday to remedy many of those problems. Gov. Rick Scott and Republican lawmakers made overhauling the election system a priority this year. Their push to change the law — a redo on a much-criticized bill passed in 2011 — was a response to waits of hours by voters in several counties and a flawed early voting program.
In Miami-Dade, the county with the longest lines, some people waited six hours to cast their ballots; others voted after Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, had conceded to President Obama.
“Let’s put ourselves out in front of the nation on this issue,” said Representative Jim Boyd, a Sarasota Republican who spearheaded the bill in the House.
On Friday, the House voted 115 to 1 and the Senate voted 27 to 13, with Democrats in the minority, to send the bill to Mr. Scott. The governor, a Republican, is expected to sign it into law. The bill increases the number of early voting days and sites, allows voters to correct an absentee ballot with a missing signature and shortens the length of constitutional amendments on the ballot.
It was drafted with the cooperation of the state’s 67 election supervisors, who warned Republicans in 2011 that the changes in the law then would gum up the system on Election Day. A number of the law’s provisions faced legal challenges.
Full Article: Florida Lawmakers Approve Overhaul of State’s Problem-Ridden Voting Process – NYTimes.com.