Gov. Rick Scott – who slashed early voting from 14 to 8 days, then defended the decision in court – said Thursday he thinks returning to 14 early-voting days will help ease long lines and delays in counting ballots that once again made the rest of the country question whether Florida knows how to run an election. The Republican governor also wants more early-voting sites and thinks ballots should be shorter. The 2012 ballot was unusually long after the Republican-dominated Legislature crammed 11 proposed constitutional amendments onto it and didn’t stick to the 75-word ballot summary that citizens groups must adhere to when placing a question on the ballot by petition. “We need shorter ballots. We need more early voting days, which should include an option of the Sunday before Election Day. And, we need more early voting locations,” Scott said in his statement.
In 2011, Scott signed an elections bill that cut early voting from 14 to 8 days and eliminated the Sunday before Election Day as an early voting day – one that was used by many black churches for “souls to the polls” voting drives.
When voter rights groups sued to stop implementation of the law, Scott not only defended in court, but repeatedly backed it in interviews. When many called for him to issue an executive order extending early voting to alleviate long lines, as his predecessor Gov. Charlie Crist did in 2008, Scott continued to stand by the law.
Full Article: Fla. Gov. Scott does about-face on early voting | News-JournalOnline.com.