{"id":6611,"date":"2008-11-03T13:33:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T21:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=6611"},"modified":"2009-11-23T13:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T21:06:00","slug":"impossibly-long-lines-for-elderly-voters-in-fl-ga-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=6611","title":{"rendered":"Impossibly Long Lines for Elderly, Other Voters in FL, GA, Elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

From an emailer in Florida…<\/p>\n

Brad – I’m watching elderly voters, with canes, who can barely stand, waiting for up up 7 hours to early vote in Florida. It’s breaking my heart. PLEASE WRITE ABOUT IT AND DEMAND AARP TO MONITOR THIS. I really hope people are not getting hurt in their attempt to exercise their voting rights. This is either voter disenfranchisement or elder abuse – neither is acceptable.<\/div>\n

And we continue to hear from other sources that the bottleneck in Florida is at check-in<\/i> with the state’s new, computerized voter registration system, not<\/em> with the new paper ballot op-scan system which is used after<\/i> a voter votes. (Though there have been reported problems with the state’s new Diebold print-on-demand system for printing ballots for voters to fill out as well.)<\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow correctly noted (see video below<\/em>) that these waits in FL, GA, and elsewhere, amount to a “poll tax.” She’s right.<\/p>\n

As I noted last week<\/a>, we have just one early voting location in all of Los Angeles — the largest voting jurisdiction in the country, larger than 41 states combined — and at this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to vote myself<\/i> if the lines are too long tomorrow, since I have to go on air LIVE, hell or highwater at 3pm PT to anchor the NovaM Radio Network’s<\/a> “Special Election Night Coverage.”<\/p>\n

Here’s what the lines looked like this weekend at L.A.’s only early voting location, a 40-minute drive from where I live (photo: Margery Epstein<\/em>)…
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And here’s Rachel making her case, and pointing to 10 hour lines in Atlanta and elsewhere…
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