FYI: Early Voting Hours Extended

BridalKatie

From the Sentinel ....

 

TALLAHASSEE - Citing a growing body of evidence about long lines at polling sites, Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday ordered an extension of early voting hours effective through the end of early voting Sunday.

"I want to ensure maximum number of citizens can participate in our electoral process," the governor said.

The order took effect Tuesday night and requires polling sites to remain open 12 hours a day -- from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. in all 67 counties through Friday -- to accommodate a record turnout that has already exceeded 1.2 million early voters.

Crist's executive order also calls for polling sites to be open a total of 12 hours between 7 a.m. on Saturday and 7 p.m. on Sunday when early voting ends.

Diane_BN

That's awesome!

I went and early voted last week, and I'm so glad I did. One less thing for me to worry about now.

It's really encouraging that government's finally figuring out that they need to make civic participation convenient for working people.

shellym616

This is bad news for those of us that work in Elections. We are already working close to 70 hours each week and Election Day is usually a 20-22 hour workday. When are we supposed to sleep and see our families in the next week? Due to tax cuts our budgets were slashed so we have to run the biggest election in recent years on a smaller budget and less permanent staff. We depend on temporary workers but they have to be supervised by permanent staff. This is crazy and what really burns me up is that the legislators are the ones that called for this change when they are the ones that wrote the laws about Early Voting. Why are there long lines? Because the law only allow us to use libraries (which don't always have the biggest meeting spaces) and not civic and community centers that could fit more workers, secrecy booths and voting equipment, and THEY limited us to only 8 hours per day, as a matter of fact if we tried to be open for more than 8 hours we would be in violation of a law. Yes, voting is important and it is great to see the participation but really how much easier can it be? You can vote by mail, for 12 hours on Election Day and early voting is a whole 15 days including weekends what more can we do?

BridalKatie

Diane_BN:

That's awesome!

I went and early voted last week, and I'm so glad I did. One less thing for me to worry about now.

It's really encouraging that government's finally figuring out that they need to make civic participation convenient for working people.

 

I voted on Friday.  Got there a few minutes before the doors closed and was back out the door in 20 minutes.  It was great.