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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Why is it taking over two hours to vote in Florida?
Posted by Jill | 9:52 PM
Here we go again:
Sure, Ted Ravelo likes Barack Obama. But two hours is a long time to stand in line to vote, especially considering that it's still October. "This has to be remedied," Ravelo, 72, said Wednesday morning, shaking his head, as he gave up on voting early -- at least that day -- at the North Miami Public Library, where a couple of dozen voting machines and their operators were struggling in vain to keep pace with a flood of citizens. "Something has to be done." A line stretched two blocks from the building, as other voters doggedly stood -- or sat on the folding chairs many of them had brought along -- for up to two hours while waiting to cast their ballots.

It may have been a bit too much for Ravelo. He said he'd probably have to give it another shot on Election Day, and that his daughters -- who have to work on Nov. 4, and who sent him to scout out the wait time -- might not get to vote at all. But compared to Monday here, when early voting opened, two hours on Wednesday was a breeze; on the first day, officials and community activists said, the wait was three times that long.

A visit to Florida in the waning days of the 2008 presidential campaign threatens to evoke a certain sense of déjà vu for another late October eight years ago. Once again, polls show the state is deadlocked -- and once again, there's a very real possibility that a lot of people who support the Democratic candidate could have trouble voting.

[snip]

The night before, Tasha Thomas, 26, who works at the University of Miami's veterinary school, had told me she'd been besieged by weird, panicky questions from supporters since she started volunteering at the Obama field office in her Miami neighborhood. People thought they couldn't vote if their voter registration card was starting to fade, or thought they had to go back to the state where they were born to vote, even if they lived in Florida now. "It was eye-opening, how much wrong information so many people have," she said.


Somehow I'm guessing that our Naples contingent will report in that in staunchly Republican Collier County, there are no problems at all.

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Blogger Unknown said...
I live in Central Florida - Seminole County -
Seminole has been a republican stronghold seemingly forever. I early voted yesterday. It was a real snap. Took about ten minutes to find a parking space and five minutes to vote. I have been astonished to watch on tv, the endless lines of potential voters. A good friend told me that I shouldn't be surprised. He suggested that I take a five minute drive into Orange county. The first voting place I saw had a line winding around the block. Orange has a sizeable minority population and a well healed democratic organization and is surely tending toward Obama.
Should I have been surprised. Of course not.
10/29/08, 4:55 PM  
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