Early Voting Insanity in Florida

[Pangloss]

I don't know if you guys have heard about this in other parts of the country, or if this is happening elsewhere (in fact I've missed the news the last couple days), but the Florida early voting situation is freaking insane. One of my wife's co-workers had to wait eight hours to vote yesterday. EIGHT HOURS! Holy cow!

 

According to the article I linked below, as of about 24 hours ago almost half a million Floridians had already voted. Some counties have already doubled their 2004 totals.

 

Part of the reason for the long lines is that it's a large ballot this year, with many referendums to consider, but I think it's mostly because people are afraid there are going to be long lines on election day. I tell you what, I wonder if election day might be the BEST day to go. (lol)

 

Here's an article about it:

http://www.panhandleparade.com/index.php/mbb/article/florida_early_voting_breaking_records/mbb7711265/

[iNow]

Yeah, I'd caught a few news articles online about the long lines with early voting in Florida. People want to be sure there's no last minute counting going on. I also applaud the turn out. Democracy in action, my friend. Too bad your local infrastructure is so sucky and can't support it adequately, though.

 

 

I early voted in Austin today. I was in and out within 10 minutes (part of that is because I had a list of exactly who I was voting for in each position I brought with me, but no lines, and plenty of open booths... like 80 of 'em). I even renewed my vehicle registration before I left, and that only took another 5 minutes. </rubbing it in>.

 

 

Cheers.

[Pangloss]

Hey, I resent the suggestion that Florida would ever have anything less than a perfect grasp of how to hold an elec-...

 

er...

 

Never mind.

[iNow]

Rofl.

[ParanoiA]

They don't have early voting in Missouri.

 

But I ran across this blog entry, the one and only anti-early voting argument I saw:

 

Better yet, lets just vote for the president for 2012 while we are at it. If a few weeks are not too early why is a few years too early? Our founding fathers simply made a mistake when they planned on us all voting on the same day. They could not have foreseen the confusion future generations would have with filling in the little circle next to the name they want on the ballot.

 

Just thought it was funny. I like the idea of early voting, to take my time filling in the little circles.

[iNow]

It is somewhat funny. It's not really a valid point though. Our final selections of candidates for 2012 have not yet been chosen, ergo we cannot early vote since the selection pool of candidates is still undefined. However, our current pool is defined and finalized (Obama/McCain/Barr/Nader/Write-In), so early voting is viable. The bigger point is the "what if" something happens between now and then... It'd have to be a super major something like Obama coming out in a crowd and yelling "Yo, where all da white women at?" Let's smoke some crack" to change my perspective at this point.

 

Now, I'm sorry ladies and gentleman, but my gig as Captain Obvious brings with it other responsibilities and I must depart.

[ParanoiA]

It'd have to be a super major something like Obama coming out in a crowd and yelling "Yo, where all da white women at?" Let's smoke some crack" to change my perspective at this point.

 

Careful...if McCain gets wind of this it'll be in his next commercial.

[Sisyphus]

"Obama [...] yelling 'Yo, where all da white women at? Let's smoke some crack.' [...] [it] change[d] my perspective." - a longtime Democratic supporter