Cars being towed from the parking lot across the street from Miami-Dade elections. “This is intimidation!” one woman yells. @miamiherald
— Kathleen McGrory (@kmcgrory) November 4, 2012
Chaos as long lines form for absentee ballots and after long waits, mostly minority people are turned away:
In a confusing turn of events, the Miami-Dade elections department shut down early Sunday afternoon after too many people showed up to request and cast absentee ballots in person. The department had opened its Doral headquarters from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. as a work-around to an early-voting crackdown law.
But by 2 p.m., around 180 voters had showed up, and department spokeswoman Christina White said the office would not be able to accommodate any more voters who showed up. Additional voters would be turned away, she said.
Elsewhere, there’s been more accommodation:
Last night, voters in Miami-Dade County were forced to wait in line up to six hours to vote. In some precincts voters who arrived at 7PM were not able to cast their ballots until 1AM. In response, Republican-affiliated election officials in Miami-Dade have effectively extended early voting from 1PM to 5PM today by allowing “in-person” absentee voting. But this accommodation will only be available in a single location in the most Republican area of the county.
A reader sent us the above photo yesterday:
Attached is an early voting photo from 7am this morning at the New River Library in Pasco County, Florida. A woman in front of me was complaining about the long lines all week. I said that you can thank Governor Rick Scott for this. She confusingly asked why? I told her he cut early voting in half this year. She still looked confused. I said, “It’s voter suppression!” I said you may want to think about voting for him again. She gave me a look and I said god forbid white people talk about voter suppression. I am white and live in a very confederate county in Florida.
In Ohio, the lines to vote are also staggering. Update from a reader:
I voted yesterday at the early voting location shown in the picture you linked to, which is in the heart of Columbus, Ohio, and I just wanted to point out that despite the fact that the line seems incredibly long, the voting center was huge and had somewhere between 40-60 voting machines running. My wait to vote was about an hour and a half, and the entire time I was there I didn’t see one person turn around and leave.
An hour and a half is still a long time to wait, yes, but for an early voting center operating on a weekend in one of the most populated areas in the state, it really wasn’t too terrible. I really don’t envy the people in Florida, however.
The Dish 