Florida remains a liability for yet another presidential election, remains worst state of all time.
A voting debacle in Doral causes chaos and confusion
Really? You "really can't disenfranchise them" because there's so many of them? Gee, thanks.
Because when you let everyone vote who wants to, you're favoring a side.
Florida bomb squad detonates ‘suspicious packages’ found outside early voting site
Voter Fraud Is Rare – and in This Cycle, It's All Been Committed by Republicans
There's tons of shit happening in Ohio too:
Ohio: Turnout vs. Suppression
Last Minute Directive by Ohio's Jon Husted Could See Legal Votes Discarded & Swing the Election
The electronic architecture of voter suppression
A voting debacle in Doral causes chaos and confusion
A voting debacle in Doral causes chaos and confusion
What began Sunday morning as an attempt by the Miami-Dade elections department to let more people early vote devolved into chaos and confusion only days before the nation decides its next president.
Call it the debacle in Doral.
Elections officials, overwhelmed with voters, locked the doors to their Doral headquarters and temporarily shut down the operation, angering nearly 200 voters standing in line outside — only to resume the proceedings an hour later.
On the surface, officials blamed technical equipment and a lack of staff for the shutdown. But behind the scenes, there was another issue: Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
The Republican had never signed off on the additional in-person absentee voting hours in the first place.
“That was counter to what I said on Friday, which was we were not going to change the game mid-stream,” he said. “I said, ‘No, there’s no way we did this.’”
But Gimenez, who is in a nonpartisan post, quickly realized it was better to let the voting go on, and the voting resumed.
The mayor said he found out early Sunday afternoon — from his daughter-in-law — about the extra voting hours.
The move had been approved by Deputy Mayor Alina Hudak at the request of Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley. The plan was simple: Allow voters to request, fill out and return absentee ballots in person for four hours Sunday afternoon.
Early voting the Sunday before Election Day used to be allowed. But it was eliminated by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott last year after Barack Obama used early voting to help him win Florida in 2008 — and therefore the presidency.
Gimenez said his initial reaction was to stop the last-minute Sunday voting.
But by then, around 180 people stood in line outside the elections office at 2700 NW 87th Ave. They shouted “Let us vote!” and banged on the locked glass doors.
“This is America, not a third-world country,” said Myrna Peralta, who waited in line with her 4-year-old grandson for nearly two hours before the doors closed. “They should have been prepared.”
“My beautiful Sunshine State,” she lamented. “They’re not letting people vote.”
...
Nearly all the voters stayed in line until a campaign worker reported her car had been towed from a private parking lot across the street. Scores of people ducked out of the line to check on their own cars. A second car had been towed.
Behind closed doors were back-and-forth phone calls among the department, the county attorney’s office and the mayor, who eventually decided to let the people outside the elections department vote. Democrats also unleashed a torrent of phone calls to reporters and the county.
“I’m upset at this change, but at the end, when you have 200, 300 voters out there ready to go, you really can’t disenfranchise them,” Gimenez said. Of the whole situation, he added: “I’m certainly embarrassed.”
Really? You "really can't disenfranchise them" because there's so many of them? Gee, thanks.
The elections office reopened its doors at 3 p.m., after being closed for about an hour, apologizing and announcing that it had added a ballot-printing machine and more poll workers and would remain open until all voters in line at 5 p.m. had cast their in-person absentee ballots.
The crowd cheered. Around 400 people stood in line at 5 p.m. Campaign workers passed out bottled water and granola bars.
Despite lines up to seven hours long at times during eight days of early voting, Gimenez had decided late last week not to ask Gov. Scott to extend early-voting hours in Miami-Dade. The last early-voting polls officially closed at 7 p.m. Saturday, but they remained open until the last voter in line checked in with a poll worker — about 1 a.m. Sunday.
Gimenez defended his decision Sunday to refrain from asking the governor for more early-voting hours.
“We all knew what the rules were. When you start doing things like that, you’re opening to criticism of favoring one side or the other,” he said. “All of us knew it was going to be eight days of early voting. It was going to end on Saturday. There is going to be hundred of polling places [open] on Tuesday.”
Because when you let everyone vote who wants to, you're favoring a side.
The county did add poll workers, machines and voting booths to early-voting sites to alleviate some wait times.
On Sunday, Gimenez said he was angrier at Hudak, his deputy, than at Townsley, the elections supervisor.
“I’m going to have to deal with this internally,” he said. “I’m not saying somebody’s going to be lose their job, but somebody made a poor error in judgment that’s not really helping the community.”
Hudak told Miami Herald news partner WFOR-CBS 4 that she approved the decision, which at the time she did not see as a major policy shift.
“I apologized to the mayor,” she said. “I should have told him. I made a bad call.”
Gimenez said the elections department wanted to offer more hours of in-person absentee voting in part because some voters had yet to receive ballots the county had mailed them due to a post-office glitch.
Opening the elections office from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. was a work-around to a provision in the state law that eliminated early voting the Sunday before Election Day. The Florida Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in the wee hours of Sunday morning seeking to somehow extend voting in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties before Tuesday.
...
The Democrats’ lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court, argued that an emergency judge’s order was necessary to “extend voting opportunities” before Tuesday in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, including allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person.
It’s unclear exactly what more a court could have done, two days before Election Day. The lawsuit did not ask U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz to reopen all early-voting sites.
“The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote. Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, and others refused to line up altogether,” the lawsuit said. “These long lines and extreme delays unduly and unjustifiably burdened the right to vote.”
An attorney for the Miami-Dade elections supervisor filed a motion Sunday morning saying the lawsuit was moot because the county would allow for in-person absentee voting Sunday afternoon.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups had asked the governor late last week to extend early-voting hours by executive authority. Scott declined Thursday night.
On Friday, Monroe County Elections Supervisor Harry Sawyer Jr., a Republican, sent the governor a letter asking for more hours. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner responded that the early-voting reports he was receiving from elections supervisors across the state were positive.
Scott signed a law last year reducing the number of early-voting days to eight from 14 and eliminating voting on the Sunday before Election Day, which Democrats used to turn out supporters in 2008. The new law guarantees one Sunday of early voting.
The number of maximum hours offered stayed the same on the books, but four years ago, then-Gov. Charlie Crist effectively extended early voting by another 24 hours.
Separately, the party sued in Orlando circuit court asking to extend early-voting hours in Orange County after a bomb scare temporarily closed a polling place. On Sunday morning, a judge ruled that the Winter Park early-voting site should open for four hours.
Excluding that site and the counties that allowed in-person absentee voting, more than 4.4 million Floridians had voted early or absentee by Sunday morning. More than 2.4 million people had voted early — most of them Democrats. More than 2 million had voted absentee — most of them Republicans.
In 2008, more people voted early, and fewer voted absentee.
Florida bomb squad detonates ‘suspicious packages’ found outside early voting site
A Florida bomb squad has detonated two suspicious packages that were discovered outside one of the state's early voting stations on Saturday morning.
Voting was suspended until 2 p.m. on the final day of early voting, with a long line of reportedly upset voters waiting to cast their ballots. Early voting has been popular in Florida, with an estimated 3.9 million votes already cast before next week's official Election Day.
The Orange County Bomb Squad said the main object in question was a cooler with a USB cord sticking out from its side. It was spotted by a voter outside the Winter Park Library at around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday.
A "suspicious garbage bag" discovered at the site was also detonated by authorities, according to local NBC affiliate WESH.com.
The AP says officials evacuated the library after the cooler and garbage bag were discovered. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has asked Gov. Rick Scott to issue an emergency order extending early voting hours through Sunday. But Scott has rejected similar requests and has not yet responded to Nelson's request.
In his letter to Gov. Scott, Sen. Nelson writes, "You should be doing everything in your power to make sure everybody has the chance to vote, and that their vote is counted. Instead, Gov. Scott, you are allowing people to be turned away and jeopardizing the credibility of Florida's election."
Voter Fraud Is Rare – and in This Cycle, It's All Been Committed by Republicans
Voter Fraud is exceedingly rare. A study by a consortium of journalism schools found only 867 proven cases in the United States since 2000. Democrats have been guilty in the past , but in 2012, all the fraud has apparently been on the Republican side of the aisle.
There's tons of shit happening in Ohio too:
Ohio: Turnout vs. Suppression
Last Minute Directive by Ohio's Jon Husted Could See Legal Votes Discarded & Swing the Election
The electronic architecture of voter suppression
