Florida had Longest Voter Wait Times, New Study Says

Press Release

Florida's Lee County is one of a handful of communities the independent investigative arm of Congress has reviewed in a probe aimed at determining how long voters had to wait in line to cast their ballot in the 2012 election.

And the news is not good. A study released today by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, shows that in Lee County more than one out of every four precincts reported having to remain open over three hours after closing time for voters still waiting in line.

The report concludes that there were two major contributing factors: a lengthy ballot and a decision by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott to cutback early voting prior to the 2012 election.

The GAO study was done at the behest of at least three key House members, including U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami), with support from lawmakers backing federal legislation designed to keep voter wait times to no more than 30 minutes. One of those lawmakers is Florida's U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. He says we should be making it easier, not harder for people to vote.

"People should not have to stand in line for hours to exercise their constitutional right to vote," Nelson said.

The three-term senator was in Lee County today to meet with fair voting advocates just as the GAO's findings were made available publicly.

After a 2012 election debacle in Florida, which saw voters in some parts of the state waiting in line for up to seven hours, and some voters still casting ballots as late as 1:30 a.m., Nelson filed legislation with California's U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Their bill is designed to help ensure that no American voter has to wait longer than 30 minutes to cast a ballot. And Nelson says the GAO study along with a similar review earlier this month both point to the need for legislation.

The earlier study, by the prestigious New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice, revealed that in 17 large Florida counties 61 percent of all the polling sites had delays of more than 30 minutes - and roughly 28 percent of them had delays exceeding an hour.

The Brennan study also stated that in Florida "precincts with higher percentages of black or Latino registered voters tended to have longer lines."

Nelson's and Boxer's legislation would require jurisdictions where voters endured long lines to implement remedial plans to fix the problems before the next federal election.

If enacted, the legislation would require electoral jurisdictions plagued by long lines to adhere to a remedial plan designed by the federal attorney general's office to prevent future polling place meltdowns.

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