If Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes had one word to summarize what she needs to reduce long voting lines in the future it would be “flexibility.”
That was the message Snipes delivered to Secretary of State Ken Detzner at a meeting on Wednesday morning. Several state legislators and election officials from Broward and the state as well as Broward Democratic chairman Mitch Ceasar attended the meeting held at the county’s Voting Equipment Center in Lauderhill.
The meeting was part of Detzner’s 5-county tour of counties that he said “underperformed” in the November election. Detzner visited Miami-Dade Tuesday — the other counties are Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Lee. He kicked off his tour in Hillsborough Monday as a benchmark county.
Broward used 17 early voting sites in November and “the space in all but three of those sites are inadequate...,” Snipes said. “We as supervisors of elections in large districts, knowing our districts, need to have the flexibility to make these adjustments.”
State law limits early voting sites to libraries and city halls, but not all such government facilities have enough space to accommodate thousands of voters and the necessary machines, Snipes told Detzner.
If Broward could choose some larger sites, than extra machines would help, she said.
Sites should be able to handle 400 to 500 voters per hour, but one site could only handle an average of about 153 an hour, her staff reported.
Noting the high volume, Detzner said: “You can’t process enough people per hour, if you can’t you are going to have long lines.”
Detzner said that he has heard a consistent message from counties that they want flexibility in terms of early voting sites.
“People talk about one size doesn’t fit all,” he said.
Detzner asked Snipes about the number of days and hours she would like to see for early voting. Snipes said that she preferred the 14 days allowed before the Legislature passed H.B. 1355 in 2011 that limited it to eight days.
“I like the 14 days, and I like Sunday before the election,” Snipes said. She mentioned that African-American churches in the past organized “Souls to the Polls” to encourage church-goers to go to early voting after church on the Sunday before election day. But that day of early voting was eliminated by the Legislature. She also said some voters prefer that day simply because they “wait until the last minute.”
“When you have something and take it away it creates issues,” Snipes said. “My preference would be to have 14 days.”
But Snipes said if she had the full two weeks and more flexibility in terms of sites, she could accommodate early voting in a 10 hour day rather than 12 hours. In reality, that still can mean longer than a 10-hour day because voters in line at closing time still get the opportunity to vote.
On Tuesday, Detzner met with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley. They asked Detzner to relay three requests to Tallahassee to try to fix last month’s elections woes:
Extend the number of early-voting days. Allow early-voting sites to open at locations other than public libraries and city halls. And cap the number of words in state constitutional amendments on the ballot.
They told him those changes to state law could help prevent some of the embarrassing problems that plagued the Nov. 6 presidential election, in which some Miami-Dade voters waited in line for seven hours and wrangled with a 10- to 12-page ballot.
“We can’t have any more ‘one-size-fits-all’ elections,” Gimenez said.
Separately, Gimenez has convened a local advisory group to make its own recommendations to the county and the state. The group, which is still awaiting the elections department’s after-action report, meets for the second time Friday.
Detzner, who praised Gimenez’s advisory committee, would not commit to any recommendations.
“We’re not here to find blame,” Detzner said. “We’re here to find solutions.”
He called giving counties flexibility on early-voting sites and hours a “universal theme,” and also recounted that other counties, in addition to Miami-Dade, reported problems with the post office delivering absentee ballots late.
And he agreed with Miami-Dade officials that fixes that might work for South Florida may not work elsewhere.
“The challenges in a large urban area like this are very different,” he said.
Top state and local elections officials meet in Broward to talk about improving voting process
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Top state and local elections officials meet in Broward to talk about improving voting process
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Top state and local elections officials meet in Broward to talk about improving voting process
