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“Nightmare:” Long lines, mail-ballot glitches mark South Florida early voting
(Miami Herald) – From Miami Haitians to a Harvard student from Broward, voting early in South Florida — be it by mail or in person — is proving troublesome. Some voters have yet to receive absentee ballots they requested weeks ago from Broward County’s elections’ office. Long lines have plagued several early voting sites, especially in Hollywood and Miramar.
In Miami-Dade, the lines have been even longer. Wait times range from 30 minutes to six hours. The North Miami library has had such long waits that Haitian-American advocates held a news conference to protest the “disenfranchisement.”
Miami Gardens had such long lines that former Gov. Charlie Crist, a President Obama campaign proxy, appeared and urged his successor, Gov. Rick Scott, to extend the length of early voting hours countywide. Crist did that in 2008, helping Obama win Florida.
Scott, a supporter of Republican Mitt Romney, probably won’t extend in-person early voting, which ends Saturday night. “We think that the hours we have right now are the best hours we’ve ever had,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida’s elections division, part of Scott’s administration.
Florida law cuts voring hours before election day
Scott signed a law last year cutting early voting days from 14 to eight and eliminated early voting on the Sunday before Election Day, when heavily Democratic African-American voters held “souls to the polls” rallies, though the law guaranteed a Sunday of early voting. The law caps access at 12 hours daily, and a cumulative total of 96 hours. In 2008, voters had a cumulative 120 hours thanks to Crist’s executive order.
Emergency Lawsuit Filed In Florida Over Long Lines At Early Voting
Politico – If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.
A broad mandate this is not.
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Colonial Life and the American Revolution
In Colonial America, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting much poorer. In 1687 in Boston, the top 1% owned about 25% of the wealth. By 1770, the top 1% owned 44%. In those same years, the poor–those who owned no property–represented 14% in 1687 and 29% in 1770.
In the various colonies the wealthy merchant class introduced property qualifications for voting in order to disenfranchise the poor and protect their own privileges:
- In Pennsylvania, white males had to have 50 pounds of “lawful money” or own fifty acres of land.
- The result was that only 8% of the rural population and 2% of the urban population of Philadelphia could vote
The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 ignored women, slaves, servants and the poor, but it did challenge property rights: all free men who paid any public taxes whatsoever were entitled to the vote. This constitution is of major importance in American history because it reveals that the working class had a clear vision of government and the intelligence and resourcefulness to gain and use political power. By contrast the later federal Constitution is clearly seen as an elitist document which empowered the wealthy class.
More below the fold …
Snubbing Obama: Mort Zuckerman’s Revenge
The New York Daily News is generating some buzz online for its endorsement of Mitt Romney. After all, it’s not a conservative paper, it flipped from Barack Obama four years ago, and, well, it’s Noo Yawk, so it must be a BFD.
Here’s what some of our online geniuses are missing:
- This is about Mort Zuckerman.
- He owns the tabloid.
- He’s fed up with Obama on Israel. Game over.
Zuckerman flew with President Clinton to attend Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.
Last year, he accused Obama of a “betrayal” on Israel. Ergo, the president was never going to get the Daily News endorsement. Israel, for him, is the litmus test. And as a newspaper owner, Mort wields a mighty big megaphone.
In defiance of Feds, Florida’s Ken Detzer continued with voter purge
(CS Monitor) June 8, 2012 – State officials in Florida insisted they would resume a purge of non-citizens from voter polls over the objections of the US Department of Justice’s Voting Rights Division. Republican Gov. Rick Scott requested county voting resistrars to purge the voter rolls to prevent illegal immigrants from lining up to vote in the presidential election in November. The move is one of several – including voter ID laws – championed by Republican governors in the South as targeting voter fraud, but which are viewed by the Justice Department as unfairly targeting minority voters.
In its letter to the state, the Department of Justice said Florida may be in violation of several laws, including a lack of so-called precleareance from the Voting Rights Division, which must okay any changes to election rules for half a dozen Florida counties under the 1964 Voting Rights Act. The DOJ also pointed out that Florida law prevents the state from removing voter names within 90 days of an election, in this case an August primary.
Ken Detzner argued that the state currently removes names within that 90-day period if people are found to be felons, mentally incompent or dead. It doesn’t seem logical, Detzner said, that noncitizens “would have more rights than someone who is a felon.”
Position Florida SoS changed by law since Katherine Harris in 2000
- see my recent diaries:
- Hope For Millionaires vs Hope For Millions
- Last Dirty Trick – Repugs Use SPAM Message Bombs
- Grab Your Gun, the Socialists Are Coming to TX
