Florida official: Cutting early voting times a mistake
A Florida elections official tells House lawmakers that curtailing early voting led to long lines in 2012.
Posted — Updated"It was a nightmare," said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla.
Sancho and Brian Kemp, Georgia's secretary of state, were invited to speak mainly about how voter identification requirements are handled in their states.
For example, House Bill 451, filed by Rep. Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, would cut North Carolina's early voting period by a week, to roughly 10 days, and outlaw early voting on Sundays.
Sancho said that lawmakers in Florida have taken up a bill to both restore the early voting period to a full two weeks and allow for Sunday voting.
Florida counties haven't been able to open enough voting-day locations to keep up with population growth, he said, calling early voting "our safety valve."
Reducing early voting led to Election Day wait times of 45 minutes, on average. The last voter in the state cast a ballot after 2 a.m. on Wednesday, the day after polls formally closed.
"Early voting is where the extra voters have to go," Sancho said. "That's the only way we can accommodate them."
Starnes said he was surprised to hear about Sancho's testimony. He sits on the House Elections Committee but had to leave the hearing before Sancho started his presentation.
"I'd like to know more about what went on in Florida, because it sounds to me like it was more incompetence of people who are running the system. If they just cut it down from 14 to eight days, I can't imagine that would cause a line to be eight hours long," Starnes said. "That's just inconceivable."
Starnes said he filed his bill to make the process run more smoothly. Shortening the time, he said, would let election officials attract more qualified election workers, noting that the prolonged early voting period keeps many people from volunteering to work at the polling places.
"My attempt was not to deny anyone the right to vote. It was just to make the process work efficiently," Starnes said. "I was frankly just surprised that the blacks took it as an attempt to suppress their vote because that was never my intent at all."
Voter ID praised
Both Sancho and Kemp said that voter ID has been successful in their states.
Jones also noted how that cost is much lower than the estimates put forth by ID opponents in North Carolina.
House Republicans said they will pass a voter ID requirement this year.
Sancho said that his county has not had to turn away many voters as a result of voter ID requirements. Rather, he said, voters showing up at the wrong precinct is a much bigger issue. As for whether voter ID prevents fraud, Sancho said that was not the case.
The vast majority of fraudulent behavior around elections, he said, involves two circumstances: "absentee ballots and individuals manufacturing voter registration so they get paid for collecting signatures."
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