Audio By Carbonatix
For once, Florida’s election officials have made the news recently for doing the right thing.
The same week that the NAACP sued the governor of Virginia for not doing enough to accommodate the millions of voters expected to cast ballots this year, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist declared an emergency and extended early voting hours.
It seems to be working — the Herald reports this morning that wait times are shrinking after a week of hours-long lines. As always, you can check out wait times here.
But even amidst this unusually competent election handling in the Sunshine State, the New York Times reports this morning that many black voters still remember getting burned by the thousands of ballots, many from poor black districts, tossed for “irregularities” during the 2000 election.
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“I feel good, and I don’t feel good,” one local voter told the Times. “I’m thankful to God that this is happening in my lifetime, that I get to see it. But I’m not ready to celebrate anything. This could be a very tricky time for us. I don’t trust the polls. And the state of Florida in the past has had a lot of crooked things going on.”
Those concerns haven’t kept voters away, obviously — more than a million cast votes last week. Let’s just hope Florida remembers to count them all this time around.
