Today Governor Crist made the emergency decision to extend early voting hours for the rest of this week to 7am to 7 pm. In Miami Dade and Broward Counties, you can early vote through Sunday. In Florida, early voting runs for two weeks before election day. I am not sure if every state has early voting, but it sure is a great idea.
Here in The Keys, Monroe County, we have had 31% of registered voters who have already cast their ballots either by absentee (they call it vote by mail now) or by early voting. This is great news for me, since I am working the polls on Tuesday, but not such great news for my friends Connie and Germaine who work the early voting polls and usually go home at 4:30, but now will stay until 7 pm. In The Keys, I am pretty sure that the 6395 people that early voted did not have to wait in much of a line. It's not the same in Miami Dade and Broward where the lines all last week and so far this week have been a 1 to 4 hour wait. Even though the polls closed at 4:30 every day, the last person in line at 4:30 didn't cast their ballots until 8:30 or 9 pm. Most early voters in Miami Dade and Broward have been Democrats, I think that has been established. It was an honorable thing for our Republican Governor to extend the hours. On the other hand, most absentee ballots are requested by Republicans. I really don't understand why someone would rather early vote instead of requesting an absentee ballot, but that's the way they want their voice to be heard. It's a visual way to show that you are playing a part of the democratic process.
I am hoping that those people who wait to vote until Tuesday have a clear idea of what they are voting for before they get to the polls. The ballot is 2 legal sized pages, front and back, and the ammendments are just about impossible to figure out unless you have given them a lot of thought. In Marathon, there are 8 candidates running for 3 city council seats. Their biggest fear is by the time the voters get to their spot on the back page, they will be so weary of making decisions that they won't even bother to vote. And with every voter feeding two ballots into the acu-vote machine, there is twice as much chance for the machine to jam, and e-gads, that's where I take over!
I hope by the end of the week, almost everyone has early voted. But then, if Gov. Christ calls for extended hours on election night because we are still waiting for someone to vote in Miami or West Palm, there I will be, at the Precinct 20, Presbyterian Kirk, until 9:00 PM. It's my job! Someone has to do it! As my brother would say, "Vote early, cats!"