Posted on 11/10/2022 11:09:37 AM PST by Red Badger
Why can’t other states do what Florida does?
Here we are mid-afternoon the day after an election , and we still don’t know who won dozens and dozens of federal races in Arizona , California , Nevada , Washington , New York , Oregon , and other states. In several states, the results won’t be known for days, perhaps even weeks. Yet Florida, the nation’s third-most populous state, has for several election cycles in a row counted and reported all its ballots quickly on election night itself, without controversy or major court challenges.
In a world with so much technology at our fingertips and with 233 years of experience with constitutional elections, there is no good reason why every state can’t operate as cleanly and efficiently as Florida does. Indeed, for any state to fail to run elections as well as Florida does is a travesty.
Florida learned its lesson from the 2000 presidential election fiasco, which saw George W. Bush carry the state over Al Gore by 537 votes after weeks of disputes about “hanging chads,” spoiled ballots, confusing “butterfly” ballots, and other embarrassments. In a set of major reforms enacted under Gov. Jeb Bush in 2001 and in several subsequent reform laws (including one in 2021), Florida provided common sense and reliability for its voting systems.
States that adopt all the favorite “progressive” voting practices, though, do just the opposite. They endlessly complicate things, undermine voting security, diminish voter trust in voting integrity — the longer it takes to count votes, the greater the suspicions, whether justified or not, of skullduggery — and leave the rest of the country waiting just to find out which party gets to organize each chamber of Congress and work in the Oval Office.
The public should not put up with these fiascoes.
While this is not the place to detail all the things Florida does right, it is easy to cite some of the reasons for bad performance in other states — and to explain why, even apart from vote-counting efficiency, those states’ practices are ill-advised.
The biggest culprit is widespread mail-in voting, which other states don’t handle as well as Florida does. It’s a less secure system, with massive chain-of-custody issues; it requires more work from voting officials, who must verify ballot requests, ballots mailed out, and ballots mailed back; and in states where ballots need only be postmarked (rather than delivered) by Election Day, it deliberately sets up long waits.
Not only that, but it is a bad idea anyway (even though Florida uses its own version of widespread early voting). If the vast majority of voters cast ballots before Election Day, the better-known candidates, especially incumbents, enjoy huge advantages. Without a single, unified day for the public to vote (except in cases of “for cause” absentee voting), many voters deal with less information than Election Day balloters. Long-shot candidates running energetic and creative campaigns have trouble even getting attention from many voters until the very final weeks of a campaign season.
Other complicated systems, such as “ ranked choice ” voting used in Alaska, confuse voters considerably, lead to many voters gaming the system, deny the chance for one-on-one major candidate competitions, and take many days to tabulate.
Instead of all this foofaraw, Florida keeps it simple, clean, fair, and efficient. The states that fail to do so embarrass themselves, and they harm representative democracy.
Seems pretty clear to me other states are slow walking on purpose so they can cheat. Republicans need to watch closely, like what they’re doing in AZ right now.
And we got it all done under hurricane warnings with a hurricane approaching the coast!
if you are curious about the process of Florida’s vote by mail system, here is a link to Brevard County which is the Space Coast, it’s not the county I live in, but all the counties follow the same procedures.
BTW, I think Florida begins to count mail in ballots on the day of the election and has them complete in one day, that’s why a lot of counties can report results immediately after the polls close, that’s why at 7:30pm on election night, Florida can report over 2 million votes.
https://www.votebrevard.gov/Ballots-by-Mail/Mail-Ballot-Information
Yes votes can be counted quickly when there is no fraud incorporated into the system.
Florida’s current voting system is the culmination of legislative and governor changes over the past 22 years.
Florida was the laughing stock among the states in the 2000 election and made positive changes over the past 22 years to vastly improve the voting system.
Compare what Florida has done over 22 years to the INACTION by far too many states who have done nothing over the same time period.
How many states require a person to submit citizenship documents in order to get a drivers license??????????
This is the way
“””In a set of major reforms enacted under Gov. Jeb Bush in 2001 and in several subsequent reform laws (including one in 2021), Florida provided common sense and reliability for its voting systems.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, finally someone has something good to say about Jeb.
As for the good things to say about how Florida conducted this election, it sure shouldn’t go unnoticed that they just went through a massive hurricane too....”””
Yes JEB deserves credit for the positive changes he got passed by the legislature.
Rick Scott also deserves credit for the changes enacted while he was in office.
Not sure if Charlie Crist did anything to improve the system.
DeSantis also deserves credit for his positive changes.
Now the rest of the States need to get off their butts and start doing the same. Otherwise, we will continue to see the 2020 and 2024 chaos.
I do wonder how the fine citizens of Arizona put up with this slow drawn out process. It never used to be this way. Used to be, we would all hear who won in the wee hours of the night, or by the next morning at the latest.
I heard Tom Fitton say that counting votes after Election Day is unconstitutional. Tom, please take up the banner in court. Nothing could be more important.
DeSantis got rid of the two supervisors of elections who had created chaos from 2018. The other 65 counties had competent people, even the Democrat ones. He also had the voter rolls cleaned up, and his election police force has been arresting felons who weren’t supposed to be voting. He is serious about election integrity. Those who want to commit fraud may be deterred by his enforcing the laws.
He’s also gotten rid of incompetent school board members.
Florida is still counting. The headline races were blowouts that could be called quickly. The Florida Secretary of State issued an Emergency Order yesterday that extended certain deadlines dealing with provisional ballots and related items. The deadline for first unofficial results is Saturday.
It takes time to count when you have to see how much the republican is ahead and have to manufacture the right number of votes to top that.
It should but it won’t.
But what it does do is reinforce the notion that the delays in vote counting are election fixing.
Yeah, and you sign a signature scanner and the election official compares it to your driver license signature too. Extremely efficient system.
NEARLY HALF OF MI. NOW LIVES IN FL!
Georgia's former (pre-pandemic) system for absentee ballots was very similar. I used it when I was away at college because I had no interest in voting in NJ.
You applied by affidavit with proof of identity. I went in in person when I was home on vacation, but I believe they had a system for overseas military and shut-ins.
I have voted in every election since 1974, including by absentee. The very first time I ever had any trouble was 2020. Because of the pandemic I applied for a mail-in ballot "just in case". It never arrived, and when I went to vote in person I was told I had already voted. Nope. Had to swear out an affidavit - and the elections supervisor said they would compare the signature w/ the mail-in ballot. But I don't see how they had any prayer of finding it. At best I cancelled out the fraudulent vote.
You cannot embarrass cheaters
You’re absolutely right, for years and years I’ve always called it absentee ballots, for some reason the media and some Republicans started referring it to as Mail In ballots, the two are completely different.
I had a heated debate with another Freeper who vehemently disagreed with me, I said Florida did not allow mail in voting, they allowed absentee voting and the two were very different, he vigorously disagreed, I’m not sure he ever got the difference.
Since the media won't report it, there will be no embarrassment.
I’ve read several columns and listened to a couple podcasts on ranked choice and still do not entirely understand it.
What is certain is that unless I vote for those I may not support at all, my vote is tossed away.
This cannot be constitutional, yet I’m not aware of any lawsuits against this obamanation.
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