Early voting should be made easier (Fl - Why do repugs hate Voters)

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/02/Opinion/Early_voting_should_b.shtml

Early voting should be made easier
A Times Editorial
Published May 2, 2005

Early voting proved to be so popular in 2004 that nearly 1 in 5 Floridians chose to cast a ballot before Election Day. The only downside was that the wait often grew to hours. So the state's elections supervisors asked lawmakers to approve more sites and send more money to staff them.

But this is the Florida Legislature, where arrogance and cheapness constantly battle for dominance. In this case, it was a tie. Instead of expanding early voting, the House shrank it. And don't bother to complain, because the bill says early voting isn't a right but "a convenience to the voter."

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n addition to one less day and fewer hours for early voting, supervisors would be further restricted in their choice of sites. Now early voting can be offered in elections offices, city halls and public libraries. In 2004, those choices were inadequate because many counties have only one elections office, city halls were rarely used and libraries proved to be problematic because voting activities conflicted with other functions.

..more at link

Anyone who knew which way the wind was blowing before election day could use this knowledge to reverse the outcome of an election in any e-voting jurisdiction!!! There were actually cases where this may have happened in FL, IA and probably elsewhere. It's a scam!

If you want to make it easier to vote, support Election Day as a National Holiday and make it easier to register.

If you don't believe me, take a look at a Diebold Election Systems Users Guide and see how early voting is set up as virtually a separate election! Anyone with access to early results can swing votes in various directions on election day to reverse the outcome.

Sorry to be so blunt but not a lot of time to discuss this here.

Check out the DU 2004 Election forum for more threads, links, etc.

Peace.

The more people that vote the better it is for the whole country.

In Florida there is still more reg. Dems than Repug voters.

There is no assurance of that with the current system, especially in states like FL with no paper trail of the voters' intent and electronic machines that test themselves for logic and accuracy!

You are in denial. Go to the DU Election forum and look for the evidence. Look at Miami Dade where the Election Admin had to resign over vote counting problems. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

I came upon your post here quite by accident, but I couldn't resist.

A national E-Day holiday would make it easier to vote without the security risk of having millions of uncounted votes sitting around in memory cards for weeks waiting to be stolen early or on election day through machine tampering. A couple of mouse cliks is all that would take.

Sorry to have bothered you.

In order to avoid issues with weather, work, school schedules, child care, etc. It should be paper ballots collected over a week.