The Republican-controlled state legislature last year cut the number of days available for early voting from a maximum of 14 days to eight days.
However, Scott and state election officials turned down the requests. Secretary of State Ken Detzner maintained that there was not a true emergency that justified the extension.
The federal lawsuit says counties should offer absentee ballot voting at local election offices if early voting cannot be extended.
Christina White, deputy supervisor with Miami-Dade County, said the county had already planned to accept absentee ballots for four hours at its main office.
Absentee ballot voting differs from early voting in that voters must fill out their ballot, place it in an envelope and then sign it. The ballot envelopes are opened later and then fed into voting machines.
During early voting, voters place their ballots directly into the voting machines.
The lawsuit included requests for TV and radio to tell voters about the extended hours and sworn statements from several voters who said they waited in line for hours and were turned away because voting was suspended at the site. A volunteer with the campaign of President Barack Obama said that the crowd of voters dwindled from 300 to just 40 after voting was halted.
If you voted early in Florida the protocol was to have a deputy stand at the end of the line at 7PM, regardless of how long the line was and those folks got to vote even though the process went beyond 7PM.
We had the Obama Mobile cruise through the parking lot where we stood for 3 hours to vote. They dropped off Obama supporters who walked up and down the lines giving all of us the creepy feeling that they were ready to pull out their batons at any given provocation. No one said a thing but if looks could tell a message we were wondering “why are these folks here?”.
It is interesting that the only voters saying they were turned away were Obama supporters!
What part of the US Constitution (or Florida Constitution) says they HAVE to have early voting at all?