Florida: Early voting not as effective as hoped

Early voting not as effective as hoped

Floridians like being able to vote two weeks before Election Day, but early balloting has not improved voter turnout as many political activists hoped it would, according to a new legislative study.

The Senate Ethics and Elections Committee staff dug through voting data back to 1954 and compared statistics from the 2004 and 2006 elections the first two in which counties were required to provide 15 days of early voting. The study indicated that convenience, especially avoidance of long lines, was the main reason people vote early but that most of them would have cast their ballots anyway.

A spot check of elections supervisors echoed the Senate staff's findings. County voting officials also said that by reducing crowds on the big Tuesdays, early voting and mailed balloting make it easier for their staffs to run the polls.

But Brevard County Supervisor Fred Galey remains skeptical.

"We're a drive-by society; we drive up to McDonalds, we have Pizza Hut deliver, we want it made easy for us," Galey said. "Voting is a privilege and a responsibility that we have. Early voting is a novelty item like driving up to McDonald's and getting an Egg McMuffin."

He added that "the only thing that has increased is the cost and it was proven in other states that you might get an early impact from the novelty, but it doesn't increase turnout."

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Florida's 'lost' voters are overwhelmingly black and Latino

Last January, Florida implemented a new law that requires the state to reject voter registration applications if the information provided doesn't match driver's license or Social Security records. The law was crafted with help from Hans von Spakovsky, who has been accused by his former Justice Department colleagues of being "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights."

This week, the Southwest Florida News-Press published an analysis of the law's impact, finding that it resulted in the rejection of voting applications from 14,000 Floridians over the past 21 months -- three-quarters of them minorities:

Blacks were 6 1/2 times more likely than whites to be rejected ...

Hispanics were more than 7 times more likely to be failed.
Though state law requires notification of these "lost" voters, most contacted by the paper said they were unaware of the problem.

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