State: You need not be absent to vote absentee

The couple witnessed the 2000 election from their home in Tennessee, then moved to Gulfport last year, only to see a new set of problems plague last month's primary.

This is why they chose to become absentee voters last week, not trusting a touch screen machine to record their vote, not confident that their ballot would be handled correctly through the mail. They drove their ballots to the Supervisor of Elections Office in downtown St. Petersburg and were comforted only when their names were entered into a computer as having voted.

"We just wanted to make sure we put it in writing instead of it getting wiped out somehow," Sid Garza said. "We wanted to make sure our votes counted."

The Garzas are among the thousands of Floridians who are discovering the flexibility of Florida's newly relaxed rules on absentee voting. Obscured last year amid sweeping changes in the state's election law, a new provision that reduces restrictions on who can vote before Election Day is changing how people cast their ballots.

As of Monday in the five-county Tampa Bay area, more than 120,000 people had requested absentee ballots through the mail or come to local election offices to cast their ballots in person, often on a touch screen voting machine. The latter procedure is called "early voting," which is considered a form of absentee voting.

With hundreds of Tampa Bay area residents showing up to vote early each day, the number of absentee voters for Nov. 5 is quickly approaching, and might surpass, the 129,000 people who voted absentee in November 2000 for the much larger presidential election.

An estimated 45,000 people are expected to vote early in the state's two largest counties, Broward and Miami-Dade, not counting 100,000 who will cast traditional absentee ballots.

Election supervisors say avoidance of the precinct polling place, especially through early voting, is the way of the future.

"It'll grow," said Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio. "By the end of this decade I will predict that early voting will be the norm in Florida."

Deborah Clark, the Pinellas elections supervisor, recalled a recent conversation with an Arizona official who said 80 percent of Phoenix voters cast their ballots before Election Day. "I see it moving very rapidly toward that" in Florida, Clark said.

Iorio, Clark and other officials support loosening the law even more to expand early voting to less official locations.

"What difference should it make whether they vote in the mall or in my office," said Kurt Browning, the elections supervisor in Pasco County. "We have a hard enough time getting people to vote at all."

In Texas, which started early voting in 1988, voters have a 17-day period before Election Day to cast their ballots. The system allows voting at numerous locations, including malls and grocery stores.

Ed Martin, a Democratic political consultant in Austin, typically votes near the bakery section at his neighborhood supermarket. The practice has changed the way campaigns are run in Texas.

"You don't hold everything for the end," he said. That goes for what Martin termed the "negative closer," the standard attack ad that savages an opposing candidate and leaves little time for a response. It also applies, he said, to the "Knock and Drag," the Election Day turnout drive that involves "knocking" on voters' doors and "dragging" them to the polls.

"You want to make sure you've communicated your message early," Martin said. "Election Day starts 17 days out here. That's how you've got to think."

Florida campaigns have begun to catch on.

Carl Booth, the political education director for the Florida Building and Construction Trades Council, said the Orange County supervisor of elections opened his office last Sunday and will again this Sunday so voters could be bused in from Orlando-area churches.

Statewide, unions are urging their members to vote early, so their jobs don't interfere with voting next Tuesday, he said.

Last week, black registered voters in Miami-Dade County began getting automated phone calls featuring the voice of former President Bill Clinton urging them to vote early. Those calls are being sponsored by the Democratic National Committee and likely will be expanded to other areas of the state.

Republican voters, meanwhile, have been receiving automated calls from Jeb Bush and his mother, Barbara, urging them to vote absentee.

With turnout expected to top 60 percent in many counties, long lines are expected. Adding to the problem is the length of the ballot. Many early voters are taking as long as 15 minutes to cast their ballot, which does not bode well for Election Day.

Florida's new law removed restrictions that limited absentee voting to a relative few, including Americans overseas, people with religious commitments and disabilities or those who would be out of town on Election Day. Voters were required to sign a certificate attesting that their situation was sufficiently dire. Today, the required certificate for someone who votes early simply makes them promise they won't vote often.

Critics charge that early voting takes the steam out of efforts to boost turnout. Indeed, states that offer early voting have noted no significant increase in turnout.

But in Florida, where two successive botched elections have made the state the butt of jokes, the more pressing goal is simply to make an election go right, especially in heavily populated South Florida.

"The fact is it's difficult in a large urban area to have everything go right within a 12-hour period when everyone is voting at the same time," Iorio said. "It's hard to accommodate those numbers."

-- Information from Times staff writers Adam C. Smith and Wes Allison and from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Back to State news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk