Florida voting in the 2012 election was either a breeze or an ordeal -- or maybe something in between. A new report says the wide swings reflect the work of elections supervisors in the various counties.
Researchers at the Center for American Progress Action Fund tabulated turnout and registration rates, wait times, ballot rejections and purge results and ranked Florida's 40 biggest counties in order of their performance. Josh Field of the left-leaning think tank concluded it was a long way from the top to the bottom.
"Two voters in the same state may have a completely different voting experience based simply in where they live", Field said.The report found Columbia County the worst in the state and St. Johns - where St. Augustine is - the best. Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe counties scored in the middle of the pack and Broward was sixth best overall.
Brad Ashwell of Common Cause says where there are issues, voters should look to their local supervisors for the critical benchmarks.
"You know, an adequate number of poll workers, sufficient training, polling sites, polling sites for early voting, there are all finds of details for how they are managing the elections", Ashwell said.
The Legislature has been under scrutiny for passing bills that many say made voting more difficult. But Deirdre McNab, president of the Florida League of Women Voters, says lawmakers may have wised up after the difficult 2012 election, carried out under tough laws passed the previous year.
"We saw a very genuine interest in last year's legislative session toward beginning to repair some of the problems they had created", McNab said.
But this new report says local conditions may be more powerful. As an example, it said, Collier County bought new ballot scanners for the election but adjacent Lee County tried to make it through with the few it had on hand. Collier voters waited an average of eight minutes to cast ballots. In Lee, the average wait was five hours.