Too many people wanted to vote. So they closed the operation down.
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.”
Minutes earlier, a department spokeswoman had said the office did not have enough resources — only one ballot printer, five voting booths and two staffers — to handle the throng of voters and would begin turning new voters away.
“We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” spokeswoman Christina White had said. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.”
Calvin Sweeting, a 59-year-old from Opa-locka, was told he would be the last person to vote.
“They said I was the lucky one,” he said, shrugging. “It didn’t seem fair to me.”
Or to Jean Marcellus, 52, who stood behind him.
“This is ridiculous,” Marcellus shouted, holding up the ticket he was given to secure his place in the queue. “I’m the next one!”
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.” ...Miami Herald
Sometimes it's politics; sometimes it's incompetence. Doesn't matter. The great American vote mess has to change, starting with the incompetence.
The politics? That's a matter for the most aggressively partisan party -- the Republicans -- who appear wholly unashamed by what they have been doing during elections for over a decade.
In Ohio, Republican election officials will go to court on Monday to defend an 11th-hour directive to local election officials that critics say could invalidate thousands of provisional ballots by forcing voters to attest to the type of identification they provide.
Together, the pre-election legal skirmishes were a potential preview of the clashes that could emerge in as many as a half-dozen swing states over Tuesday’s voting. The closeness of the races in those states has intensified the stakes of voter turnout, smooth operations at polling places, ballot problems and recounts. ...NYT
