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.

National: Long lines, confusion reveal flaws in US elections | Missoulian

Even as President Barack Obama was about to give his victory speech early Wednesday, dozens of Florida voters waited in line waiting to cast ballots more than five hours after the polls officially closed. Thousands of people in Virginia, Tennessee and elsewhere also had to vote in overtime. Well into the 21st century, it strikes many people as indefensible that the U.S. can’t come up with a more streamlined and less chaotic election system. The president said as much at the very start of his speech. “I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time,” Obama said. “By the way, we have to fix that.” Easier said than done. There’s no single entity that sets the rules for voting in this country. Congress and the states enact overall election laws, but in most places it comes down to county or even city officials to actually run them. And those local systems are prone to problems. “We have 10,000 different systems. I wish there were only 50,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine and author of “The Voting Wars.”

Voting Blogs: “We Have to Fix That”: Will Long Lines Be the Next Major Focus for Election Reform? | Election Academy

“I want to thank every American who participated in this election … whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that.” – President Obama, last night

Every national election seems to yield a storyline for election administration – and yesterday’s story, hands down, was the long lines that many voters faced at the polls. Just to be clear, when I say “long lines” I’m not talking about one-hour waits like the one I faced at my home polling place at lunchtime yesterday – I’m talking about epic waits, including those voters who, as the President was speaking just before 2am Eastern time, were still voting in Miami.

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.

Virginia: Long voting lines blamed on high turnout, too-few poll workers and voting machines | The Washington Post

In the District, there were technical glitches with equipment at polling places. In Montgomery County, budget constraints led to about 1,000 fewer election judges than during the previous presidential election. But there’s no question about it: Some precincts in Northern Virginia held the dubious distinction of having the most brutally long lines for voters in the Washington region on Tuesday. In Prince William and Fairfax counties, hundreds waited for more than three hours — and long after polls were scheduled to close at 7 p.m. The problems were blamed on high voter turnout, unusually long ballots, a shortage of poll workers and a limited number of touch-screen machines.

National: Election Day Problems, Long Lines and Confusion | NYTimes.com

This is the day when voters raised on a reverence for democracy realize the utter disregard their leaders hold for that concept. The moment state and local officials around the country get elected, they stop caring about making it easy for their constituents to vote. Some do so deliberately, for partisan reasons, while others just don’t pay attention or decide they have bigger priorities. The result can be seen in the confusion, the breakdowns, and the agonizingly slow lines at thousands of precincts in almost every state.

National: Voting-machine glitches: How bad was it on Election Day around the country? | CSMonitor.com

Electronic voting-machine jams, breakdowns, and glitches were strewn across the Election Night landscape, creating long lines when machines simply broke down. In at least one case, a viral YouTube video purported to show a Pennsylvania machine “flipping” a vote cast for President Obama into a vote for Mitt Romney. Vote flipping occurs when an e-voting touch-screen machine is not properly calibrated, so that a vote for Romney or Obama is flipped to the other candidate. While the Pennsylvania glitch was reported and the machine reportedly taken out of service and quickly recalibrated, other flipping was reported by news media accounts in Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio.

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.

South Carolina: Turnout heavy; some in Richland County voting as late as 9 or 10 pm | TheState.com

Voters across South Carolina turned out in droves in Tuesday’s presidential election, but many waited hours to cast ballots, and in some places, they said the wait resulted from a lack of voting machines or malfunctioning machines.
The S.C. Election Commission reported heavy turnout, with sporadic problems across the state. But the most complaints about the time it took to vote came from Richland County, said Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the election commission. Many Richland County voters spent up to seven hours in line at precincts that they said didn’t have enough working voting machines to handle the crush of people. Voters at some Richland County precincts were still in line after polls closed at 7 p.m., some reportedly as late as 9 or 10 p.m.

Virginia: Voters find power outages, long lines at Virginia polling places | NBC12.com

Election Day is underway, but not without some issues in parts of Central Virginia. A pair of brief power outages in at least three polling places around 6:10 a.m. caused issues for some voters in Eastern Henrico. The lights flickered at the polls at Central Gardens Elementary School, Abundant Life Church, and Ratcliffe Elementary School.  However, Central Gardens power did not return, according to Dominion Power.

National: Why long lines are a voting rights issue | Facing South

In 2008, when reports surfaced of voters waiting in line for two, three, and, in one remarkable case in Georgia, 12 hours to vote, at Facing South we wrote about why this is a voting rights issue. Here we go again. Over the last two weeks, reports have flooded in of voters waiting for hours at early voting sites to cast their ballots. Florida has again dominated the headlines, with accounts of voters standing in line for up to six hours. In South Florida, Democrats sued after Gov. Rick Scott opted against extending early voting hours, as his Republican predecessor had in 2008. (Scott insisted voting was running smoothly.)

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: 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.

Ohio: Huge turnout, long lines for early voting in Ohio | cleveland.com

Early voters jammed county election boards across Ohio Sunday on the last weekend day before the election in a state where that presidential election may well be decided. At some sites, lines snaked several city blocks and it took hours for voters to get inside to cast a ballot. In Cleveland, more than 2,500 people braved the cold in a line that stretched two blocks and started forming two hours before the doors opened, but moved quickly all afternoon. Polling stations were open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. across the state.

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.

Nevada: Early Voting Problems in Nevada | KOLO

The Washoe County Registrar of Voters reports more than 9,600 people came out for the first day of early voting on Saturday, but the process wasn’t without problems. Voters at the Sun Valley Neighborhood Center were forced to wait hours to cast their ballots. For most of the day, only three machines were available, resulting in long lines of people. “I’ve never waited in line, ever,” Debbie Shade, a long-term resident of Sun Valley said. Multiple complaints to the Registrar of Voters Office resulted in two more machines becoming available. Luanne Cutler, Administrative Assistant for the Washoe County Registrar of Voters said they did send fewer machines to the location for two reasons. One reason being the space available to them only fit three machines, and the second reason is they based the number of past voter participation. But some voters aren’t buying that excuse.

National: If the Supreme Court cuts early voting in Ohio, it could swing the state from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney | Slate Magazine

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to reverse a federal court ruling requiring the state of Ohio to let its counties decide whether to permit early voting during the weekend before Election Day. With the presidential race tight in Ohio, and the presidency potentially turning on the state’s electoral votes, the court’s decision could help determine who will win the White House. While the Obama campaign has a strong policy argument for the extension of early voting to include this final weekend, its constitutional claim is a major stretch. In 2008, more than 100,000 voters—many poor, women, less educated, and minorities—cast ballots in Ohio during the weekend before Election Day. Voting in Ohio in 2008 was a great success compared with 2004, when long lines, especially in urban areas such as Cleveland, were common and discouraged people from voting. Early voting relieved the stress of Election Day.  But the Ohio legislature, dominated by Republicans, cut back on the last weekend of early voting for 2012. Florida’s Republican legislature did the same thing, likely out of a belief that this late period of early voting helps Democrats.

Editorials: Ohio’s Secretary of State Subverts Voting Rights | The Nation

Once again, political experts are predicting that the 2012 presidential election could be decided in the battleground state of Ohio, like it was in 2004. Remember what happened that year? George W. Bush won the state by a narrow 118,000 votes in an election marred by widespread electoral dysfunction. “The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters,” found a post-election report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. According to one survey, 174,000 Ohioans, 3 percent of the electorate, left their polling place without voting because of massive lines in urban precincts and on college campuses. Ohio’s Secretary of State that year was Ken Blackwell, co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

Florida: Thosands of notices urging voters to vote absentee are mailed out to voters in Duval County | firstcoastnews.com

The ballot is so long and complicated that Duval County elections officials are urging people to request an absentee ballot to avoid a two- to three-hour wait at the polls. The city is mailing out absentee ballot requests to more than 200,000 voting households. You can tear it off, fill it out, with up to two voter requests for absentee ballots per form. Then tape it and mail it. Postage is prepaid. The mailing is costing the elections office more than $21,000, but it will make the election more controllable, according to Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland. First Coast News decided to find out how long it would take to fill out the ballot.

New Hampshire: Voter ID law will require state to contact tens of thousands of people after election | Nashua Telegraph

New Hampshire election officials may have to hunt down nearly 50,000 people in November and ask whether they really voted.
That’s one possible conclusion from Tuesday’s dry run of the state’s new voter ID law, which also produced some hard feelings, irritation and a bit of rudeness, judging from comments recorded by ballot clerks at Nashua’s Ward 2. Roughly 7 percent of the 7,570 people who voted in Nashua on Tuesday didn’t have a photo ID or didn’t want to show it. Figures for ID-less voters varied around the region, from 2 percent in Hudson to more than 10 percent in some Souhegan Valley towns. Statewide figures were not available Wednesday. But let’s assume the 7 percent figure holds true statewide in November – and City Clerk Paul Bergeron expects it to rise in Nashua, since the presidential race will draw lots of casual voters who won’t know about the new law. Then consider that 700,000 people voted in New Hampshire’s last presidential election, a number that also seems likely to rise. The conclusion? At least 49,000 people may have to fill out and sign an affidavit attesting to their identity before they can vote, which could lead to long lines at voting places, the need for more poll workers and, assuming a longer wait, some people turning away from voting entirely.

Pennsylvania: Path to voter ID not without glitches | Philadelphia Inquirer

With the arrival last week of the Pennsylvania Department of State voter ID card, state officials say it should be possible for every eligible voter to obtain poll-worthy identification.
Possible does not always mean easy. The new voter ID has been officially described as a “safety net” for people who cannot obtain all of the documents needed for a traditional nondriver license. Those include people who never had a birth certificate or can’t produce a marriage license to verify a name change, for example. But the card isn’t valid for any purpose other than voting, and you can’t get one without swearing that you have tried every other avenue to get a secure ID. For most people, that means at least one previous trip to a Department of Transportation office. “We call this an exhaustion requirement,” for both legal and metaphoric reasons, said Witold “Vic” Walczak, the ACLU lawyer who is fighting the state’s voter ID law in court.

National: Partisan Rifts Hinder Efforts to Improve U.S. Voting System | NYTimes.com

Twelve years after a too-close-to-call presidential contest imploded in a hail of Florida punch card ballots and a bitter 5-to-4 Supreme Court ruling for George W. Bush, the country’s voting systems remain as deeply flawed as ever with any prospect of fixing them mired in increasing levels of partisanship. The most recent high-profile fights have been about voter identification requirements and whether they are aimed at stopping fraud or keeping minority group members and the poor from voting. But there are worse problems with voter registration, ballot design, absentee voting and electoral administration. In Ohio, the recommendations of a bipartisan commission on ways to reduce the large number of provisional ballots and long lines at polling stations in 2008 have come to naught after a Republican takeover of both houses of the legislature in 2010. In New York, a redesign of ballots that had been widely considered hard to read and understand was passed by the State Assembly this year. But a partisan dispute in the Senate on other related steps led to paralysis. And states have consistently failed to fix a wide range of electoral flaws identified by a bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III in 2005. In Florida, for example, the commission found 140,000 voters who had also registered in four other states — some 46,000 of them in New York City alone. When 1,700 of them registered for absentee ballots in the other state, no one investigated. Some 60,000 voters were also simultaneously registered in North and South Carolina.

Ohio: Overhaul of Ohio election laws still stalled – parties agree on need for reform, but not much else | Cincinnati.com

In the 2008 election, Ohio had its typical problems, among them a high number of provisional ballots and long lines at some polling locations. So the then-secretary of state set up a series of bipartisan “election summits” on how to fix the problems. Nearly four years later, most of the recommendations haven’t been voted on by the General Assembly, much less put into action. This even though the state’s Association of Election Officials, made up of Democratic and Republican appointees to boards of election across the state, endorsed the recommendations in April 2009, calling them “ripe for review and reform prior to the 2010 election year.” The summit process in 2008 and 2009 was unusual, said Lawrence Norden, a national expert on elections who chaired the summits for New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. He doesn’t know of “another state where there’s been a bipartisan review open to the public” to recommend improvement in election law and administration, he said. “But I don’t know that it ultimately, at least for now, produced the results I had hoped for,” conceded Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program and an adjunct professor of law at NYU.

Pennsylvania: Voter ID law could extend lines at polls | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Allegheny County elections chief testified Friday that he expects the new voter ID law could lead to longer lines at the polls in November as workers explain the requirement and issue provisional ballots to people without acceptable ID. Mark Wolosik, who manages the county elections division, told the Commonwealth Court judge hearing a challenge to the new law that he anticipates traffic at the polls will slow. “You can really only process one person at a time,” he said. “So the showing of the voter ID will lengthen the process … .”

Kansas: Voter ID law burdens Wichita | Wichita Eagle

Voter ID is now the law in Kansas. But Kansans and especially Wichitans should note some serious pitfalls of the law as identified by a new national study, and consider whether they’re comfortable if their cure for the negligible problem of voter fraud interferes with the constitutional right to vote of some eligible voters. For those who already have driver’s licenses or other accepted government-issued photo IDs, remembering to bring an ID to the polls for the August primary or November general election will be no big deal. Those 65 and older may use expired photo IDs. And it’s true that a Kansan without a driver’s license can secure a free ID card from the state Division of Motor Vehicles by providing proof of identity and residence, and that anyone born in the state can get a free birth certificate if needed to prove identity. But that all involves filling out forms, signing affidavits and finding transportation to offices during daytime hours – no small matter anytime given Wichita’s poor bus system but especially this summer, given the long lines at the Kansas driver’s license offices related to computer changes.