FIGURES Late Tuesday night, Democrat Charlie Crist called up incumbent Republican Rick Scott to concede in Florida’s gubernatorial race. Heading into Election Day, polls showed the two candidates in a virtual tie. After all the precincts had reported, Scott came out ahead by roughly 70,000 votes, 48.2% to 47%, just outside Florida’s recount margin of .5%. The win seemed to fit within the accepted narrative of a GOP ‘wave,’ where Republican candidates defeated Democrats in Senate, House and gubernatorial races across the country. However, Florida’s race may be a bit more complicated than that as a number of disturbing events seemed to occur in Broward County and South Florida, a stronghold for Democrats and an area that could have carried Crist to victory with strong turnout. It came to Crust’s attention on Tuesday that there were a number of issues going on in Broward County related to voting machine malfunctions and voters being sent to different polling locations. At least one polling location was not operational for at least an hour Tuesday morning, preventing voters from casting ballots before heading off to work. The combination of a number of factors created lines of at least half an hour in a number of precincts in Broward County. Due to this, Crist filed an emergency motion to keep those polls open at least another hour. However, despite ample evidence that a large number of voters had been impacted and had their ability to vote suppressed, a Circuit Court judge denied Crist’s request. Those who were still in line when the polls closed at 7 PM ET were still allowed to cast their votes, but nobody else was able to go back in line, even if they had to leave previously or had been given inaccurate information about their polling location. It appears it wasn’t just long lines and machine ‘malfunctions’ that possibly helped get Scott reelected. While voting late Tuesday afternoon, Izak Pratt of Miami-Dade County noticed a poll worker giving inaccurate information to a black man who was attempting to cast his vote. The man had a US passport as identification. However, the poll worker told the man that he needed a driver’s license with his current home address on it in order to vote. As recounted in a piece for The Gaily Grind, Pratt intervened after the man gave up and was walking out.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 19:42:59 +0000
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