by Nancy Ratzan, NCJW Immediate Past President, and
Robin Leeds, NCJW Board Director

On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, we saw the curtains pulled back on voting in South Florida, once again exposing a labyrinth of inter-tangled and ever-expanding voting challenges. Though Florida’s voting experience has been anemic since 2000, I don’t think any of us expected South Florida’s election experience to be the ‘perfect storm’ this year.

Our story actually began months ago. We wanted to engage in NCJW’s national Promote the Vote, Protect the Vote 2012 Initiative, and support NCJW’s collaboration with The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which coordinates the nation’s largest non-partisan voter protection project. After excellent training, great resources, connecting with a network of trained legal and non-legal field volunteers and staff, we were excited to accept our assignment to staff the Broward County Command Center with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Project on Election Day.

Even before the polls opened on November 6, the fault-lines in our election process were exposed. Before dawn, the lines were extreme and when the polls opened at 7:00 am, equipment failures causing long waits to become unreasonable at numerous sites. Soon after, an increasing array of seemingly contagious problems from multiple sites were reported — poll workers not providing accurate information, agitated voters, scanners broken and inequitably distributed, eligible voters required to submit provisional ballots, and voters not receiving the appropriate language and disability assistance. As the day unfolded, barriers to participation grew to epidemic proportions. Among the escalating problems were polling sites running out of ballots and waiting hours for replenishment, more scanners breaking and some sites without any functioning scanners, and more registered voters not found in the poll workers’ voting lists (even though some “rejected” voters were easily found on the Election Protection smart phone app by field volunteers).

Exacerbating the equipment and data base failures, were two other fatal flaws. First, Florida’s ballot included eleven proposed state constitution amendments, all of which were crafted by the Florida legislature. As a result the ballot was eight to ten pages long (and each double-sided page had to be scanned separately by each voter). Each of the eleven proposed constitutional amendments was complicated and lengthy, extending the voting time for each voter. Second, the Florida legislature reduced the early voting days from fourteen to eight, and removed early voting on the Sunday before Election Day, the historic “Souls to the Polls” early voting day for the African-American community. There simply were not enough hours, days or sites to accommodate the number of voters who wanted to vote. South Florida voters were still casting ballots after midnight, even after the presidential election was called.

The great news is: Americans want to vote. The voter turnout was exceptionally high and voters were engaged. The behind-the-curtain news is:  We cannot conduct another general election with the same flawed system and rules. We must escalate efforts to reform our election procedures. We need a national election system that ensures uniformity, transparency and integrity. As President Obama said on Election Night, “we need to fix this.” We look forward to being part of the solution with NCJW and the National Election Protection Coalition.