Election Reform in Florida that’s anything but
Bottom Line: Bucher and Snipes won’t be around to mismanage elections in 2020,but there appear to be more changes to our elections than just personnel. One of the bills advancing in the state session is an overhaul of election procedures statewide. They include...
- Mandates up-to-date equipment for all election supervisors
- Standardizes ballot design locations for local races
- Moves the primary back from the general election by an extra week
- Moves the deadline for rejected absentee ballots to 11 days after the election
Alright, so let me dive in a little here. The updated voting equipment thing. Ok, I can be implored go along with that given that Susan Bucher choose not to and perhaps one day there will be another supervisor who’s equally irresponsible but here’s the thing. It’s redundant at best. The state already has mandated recount deadlines and outdated equipment can’t meet them – so at best this really reinforces existing law. About the ballot design provision... Of everything proposed this one makes the most sense to me. Having a template for ballots state-wide that are populated at the local level as needed makes more sense than leaving it all to whatever a given election’s supervisor decides to do. As for the others...
I’m borderline ambivalent about moving the primaries back an extra week from the general election so I’ll leave that one alone but not the other... I’m sure somewhere in Tallahassee there’s a really good explanation for why “election reform” aimed to help prevent the Bucher’s and Snipes’s of Florida from screwing the entire state again in the future would move the “curing” of absentee ballots to 11 days after the election, vs the day prior to the election currently, but you’ll never sell me on it.
Are we stuck on stupid? Seriously? You want to turn every close state-wide race into an 11-day fiasco? This might sound insensitive but too bad. There are rules to follow when you vote. If you don’t follow them by the time the voting deadlines have passed, and the polls have closed your vote shouldn’t count. Period. Going back for days after an election to try to find people who didn’t follow the rules, to try to get their vote to count, is nonsense that holds the state hostage and invites maximum opportunity for voter fraud.
This is absurd and should be a hard no. To be continued...