2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumFL voters: Is this is true?
Big Ed just said that the ballot is 12 pages long there!!
LoisB
(7,074 posts)Sekhmets Daughter
(7,515 posts)Here in Palm Bach Cty. the ballot is 3 double sided so 6 pages. The same is true in Hillsborough county. The Miami-Dade ballot is 5 double sided pages for a total of 10....
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Two paragraph length initiatives. Five pages of judge renewals.
I don't really see the problem here.
People are acting like a twelve page ballot is some kind of aberration.
tessar
(58 posts)Thank you for your concern.
alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)I'm actually NOT concerned.
You're misusing the whole "thank you for your concern" thing.
Cetacea
(7,367 posts)Ah, it's good to be back.
LukeFL
(594 posts)It longs the process where it should be easy and fast. A lot of repub voters are taking their time to cast their ballot to discourage ppl who have been waiting in long lines.
I waited two hrs last week, but last night some family members waited 4 hrs to vote here in Palm Beach county.
savebigbird
(417 posts)It will give me a more of a chance to show off my "Made in the USA" and BO political pins to my republican neighbors and friends.
Lone_Star_Dem
(28,158 posts)Way to lengthy wording in the Props. To add to the long waits I'm sure.
Sekhmets Daughter
(7,515 posts)Big Ed is frequently long on heart and short on facts. In Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties the ballot is 6 pages long. In Miami-Dade County it is 10 pages long. Every county is different because of local elections. The 12 constitutional amendments have made the ballots longer than usual this year. I shall be cheerfully voting NO on all of them...which will probably be the most common response as people will become tired of trying to figure out what they say and as any psychologist can tell you, NO is easier than yes.
amuse bouche
(3,657 posts)Tampa here. 3 pages both sides, but I already knew I was going to vote no on every amendment and yes to the judges. It took me 10 minutes
People get sample ballots in the mail or can look at it online and bring notes. A little planning makes the process quick and painless
Sekhmets Daughter
(7,515 posts)rockbluff botanist
(61 posts)LisaL
(44,962 posts)That should take care of the problem.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)smccarter
(145 posts)2 pages front and back. I was required to present a photo ID.... was told that my voter registration card was no longer necessary. The photo ID was used to verify me as being who I am.
I waited in line for an hour to vote... from 11:30am until 12:30pm on Wednesday.
Proud as hell to do it..
Florida is turning blue this election!!!
amuse bouche
(3,657 posts)just published..Miami Herald FL Poll: Romney 51%-Obama 45%
Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/11/miami-herald-fl-poll-romney-51-obama-45-1.html#storylink=cpy
LisaL
(44,962 posts)Why exactly should we believe this particular poll?
amuse bouche
(3,657 posts)It's just that the Miami paper published an entire story justifying it
smccarter
(145 posts)I voted and how it went. Didn't mean to ruffle feathers. Amazing how radical both sides are these days. This isn't American Idol, it's an American political election. Get a grip.
But... Florida will be blue in 2012. My vote counted.
amuse bouche
(3,657 posts)I have no idea what that means in reference to DU.. Du is a place for discussion...just saying
demgrrrll
(3,590 posts)They did a really good thing they gave all the ballot intiatiives on a laminated board so you could read or re read while there. I think that was great. The ballot initiative was a few pages long. They did a great job at the polling place.
AmandaInAustin
(13 posts)From The Tampa Bay Times 11/2/12:
Hillsborough County: The One to Win: Florida has 67 counties but only one with an uncanny knack for picking presidents.
Hillsborough is the only Florida county that twice voted for George W. Bush and then flipped to Barack Obama in 2008. It's the only county that can boast of voting for the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1960, except 1992 when Hillsborough voters backed George H.W. Bush.
"If you want to watch Florida, just look at Hillsborough. Whatever trend you see in the state you see it right here,'' said Pam Iorio, the Democratic former Tampa mayor and elections supervisor. "I think we're more important than the whole concept of the I-4 corridor."
And here's something that may be counterintuitive for a county where Republicans hold five of seven County Commission seats and four of five constitutional offices: Hillsborough, Florida's ultimate bellwether, leans Democratic.
No, it doesn't perform that way consistently, but Republicans and Democrats alike say the Hillsborough electorate is decidedly Democratic with the right candidate.
"Any Republican running countywide in Hillsborough starts out with a standard 6-point deficit," said Sam Rashid, a conservative activist in east Hillsborough.
Why? The urban core of Tampa. Republicans can sweep the county's suburban precincts by comfortable margins, but it's not enough to compensate for the overwhelming margins Democrats can win in heavily African-American and Hispanic precincts in Tampa. When those voters turn out in large numbers, Democrats win; when they don't, Democrats usually lose.
In 2004, about 50,000 African-Americans and 35,000 Hispanic voters in Hillsborough voted. John Kerry lost the county by 7 percentage points and the state. In 2008, nearly 80,000 African-Americans and more than 50,000 Hispanic voters turned out. Obama won the county by 7 percentage points and won the state.
Since 2008, the percentage of Hispanic voters in Hillsborough has climbed from nearly 12 percent to 14 percent. African-Americans account for more than 15 percent of the county's electorate.
"If the African-American vote comes out and the Hispanic vote comes out, then Obama will win again," Iorio said. "If he can bring out that minority vote in substantial numbers then he can afford to lose some of the swing voters."
Any discussion of Hillsborough County is really a discussion of Florida as a whole because it is a near-perfect microcosm of the state, which in turn is a microcosm of America. Be it age, ethnicity, race, suburban, urban, rural, Southern, Northern, gay, straight, blue-collar, white-collar, military you name it, Hillsborough has it.
That's why Tampa is a favorite location for corporations and campaigns to conduct focus groups. If a product or message can sell well in Hillsborough, it will sell well in America.
"It's just an amalgamation of America within the confines of one single county,'' said Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, a Democrat. "There are shades and colors and hues in this community that may not exist anywhere else."
Hillsborough highlights one of the biggest questions about this presidential election in Florida: Will it be the base who decides the race, or the swing voters and independents?
Drive around the 1,000 square miles of rural, urban and suburban Hillsborough, and it's hard to miss the Romney-Ryan yard sign advantage.
"It's off the charts, the energy level. People are coming in all the time wanting a sign or a sticker," said Claudia LeFevre-Lowry, volunteering at the county GOP's satellite office in Carrollwood.
Activists say the enthusiasm to defeat Obama has been strong throughout the year, but the energy level exploded after the first debate when Mitt Romney outperformed the president.
"The week of that debate the phones didn't stop ringing," said Christopher Martin. "We probably grew (in volunteers) by 30 to 40 percent that week alone."
It's a far cry from 2008, when even the most ardent Hillsborough GOP activists at this point in the race were bracing for a loss.
"I wasn't surprised it happened, but I was really depressed. It became for me a personal mission I'm not going to let that happen again," said Art Wood, the county GOP chairman, who has three campaign offices to supplement three Hillsborough offices run by the Romney campaign. "We're getting a tremendous amount of cooperation from the Romney campaign that we didn't have with the (John) McCain campaign."
The Obama campaign has eight offices across the county. Both campaigns placed their state headquarters in Tampa.
The partisan landscape for Hillsborough boils down to Tampa being Democratic blue and the rest of the county Republican red. But the county is really made up of multiple and often unpredictable political communities: staunchly conservative FishHawk Ranch in southeast Hillsborough, loaded with active and retired military families and tea party allies; Sun City Center, home of heartland conservative retirees but no longer quite the GOP stronghold it used to be; heavily Hispanic Town 'N Country and West Tampa, where a restaurant hawking Cuban sandwiches is likely to be owned by someone from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic; South Tampa, where Republicans tend to dominate but Democrats can perform well in Hyde Park or Davis Islands; and New Tampa, where voters lean Republican but rarely turn out in big numbers in local races.
Almost everywhere are residents who vote for the candidate, not the party, and voters who defy partisan pigeonholing.
Digging into hamburger steak at Snellgrove's restaurant in Plant City last week, Wesley Swafford didn't exactly sound like a swing voter. The registered independent talked about Jeremiah Wright, about how Obama should release his college transcripts, about a culture of corruption among Chicago politicians.
"I'm a former Marine and retired police officer. Obama hates everything I'm about,'' said Swafford, who had voted earlier that day, for Romney.
A few tables away, Republican Dawna Auerbach also sported an "I Voted" sticker. Four years ago, she voted for McCain, but this time Obama got her vote.
"I just don't trust Mitt Romney. I just don't like him personally," she said, suggesting Romney seems mainly to care about wealthy Americans. "I think he just tells people whatever they want to hear."
Republican County Commissioner Mark Sharpe said Hillsborough often votes based on leadership, more than ideology.
"This is a county that will vote for Ronald Reagan and Jan Platt,'' said Sharpe, referring to the progressive, reform-minded Democratic former county commissioner.
Nobody sees Obama with any chance of winning Hillsborough as handily as he did four years ago.
"The Obama campaign and field operation is as good as any that ever entered the arena. They were masterful at identifying those infrequent voters, energizing them and getting them to vote. They're going to need that even more than they did in 2008,'' said Mayor Buckhorn.
"I think it it's a coin toss and will be determined by how well the Obama campaign drives the early vote," he said. "If they build a big-enough fire wall to withstand what I think will be a stronger Romney vote on Election Day, they can pull it off."
As of Thursday, Hillsborough Democrats had cast nearly 20,000 more early and absentee ballots than Republicans. Nobody knows if that's enough for Obama to feel comfortable about Florida's ultimate bellwether county.
"I can tell you one thing," said Josh Burgin, a Republican activist. "Hillsborough County will vote for whoever becomes the president of the United States. You can bet your bottom dollar."
Times researcher Natalie Watson contributed to this report. Contact Adam C. Smith at [email protected].] **Article linked at:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/local/article1259455.ece
AmandaInAustin
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AmandaInAustin
(13 posts)Romney Turns Off Hispanics with New & Deceptive Ad That Ties Pres. Obama to Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, Demo Annette Taddeo explains (11/1/12) *Please repost online to Hispanic and Florida groups==they have every right to be incensed by this!!
Best quotes from article: Annette Taddeo of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party says:
Well, the middle of the state as well, and we have to
remember that there`s a huge influx of Puerto Ricans in the middle of the state, and other non-Cuban Hispanics. So to pull this Cuban ad or try to pull out the Cuban vote is really desperate because now the majority of Hispanics in Florida are non-Cubans.
And so, they are -- they`re back in I don`t know what year. Again,
he`s going backwards. We`re moving forward. So they don`t even get the Hispanic community, obviously, because this is such a turnoff to the Hispanic community. And I think even to the younger Cuban community.
***Full Article
"Romney is airing a Spanish language ad meant to stoke the fears of Cuban-Americans. The ad tries to connect President Obama to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
As "The Miami Herald" reports, the Romney campaign would not furnish the ad despite repeated requests. In other words, the ad is so outrageous the Romney campaign -- well, they just tried to slip it under the radar. Obviously the strategy is backfiring.
Let`s turn to Annette Taddeo, member of the Miami-Dade Democratic
ANNETTE TADDEO, MIAMI-DADE DEMOCRATIC PARTY responds: Well, it just -- I think Mitt Romney is finally just getting absolutely desperate. It is him learning a little bit of arithmetic. Him realizing he cannot win, just like you said, without Florida, and this is absolutely desperate at its worse because I will tell you, here in Florida, this is not going to work.
Cuban-Americans, only the old ones are really, the elderly ones, are
the ones that are turning out to vote for him in big numbers. But the
younger ones don`t really want to hear about what Chavez says. We know that whatever comes out of his mouth we don`t pay attention to it anyway.
And the Hispanics that are not of Cuban descent certainly don`t care
about what Chavez says and know that President Obama can`t control that. So, we are not turned on by this ad at all. We`re actually turned off by this kind of advertising.
We want to hear about the economy. We want to hear about jobs. We
want to hear about that we`re going to get health care instead of having to go to the -- you know, to the E.R. to get our health care.
SCHULTZ: There are estimates Romney would have to win 40 percent of the Latino vote to carry Florida. So he`s going to have to -- I guess he`s going down and dirty to increase those numbers. But you`re saying there`s no way it`s going to work.
TADDEO: Well, he`s obviously, what I mean by he`s paying attention to arithmetic is because, look, on the first day of early voting, we, the
Democrats, actually turned out so many people, and we have every day
consistently, that we actually surpassed our 2008 numbers. So it was so shocking to them to see, after telling everybody, oh, we have no momentum, our people are not excited, and yet we have people standing out in lines for three hours --
SCHULTZ: Yes.
TADDEO: -- waiting to vote right here in south Florida, which is our
heavy, heavy voting area. So --
SCHULTZ: Annette, if you were to break out the state, the panhandle
pretty much Republican. The middle of the state -- how is that going to
go? I mean, I think we can make the conclusion that south Florida is going to be a real good place for President Obama. What about the middle of the state?
TADDEO: Well, the middle of the state as well, and we have to
remember that there`s a huge influx of Puerto Ricans in the middle of the state, and other non-Cuban Hispanics. So to pull this Cuban ad or try to pull out the Cuban vote is really desperate because now the majority of Hispanics in Florida are non-Cubans.
And so, they are -- they`re back in I don`t know what year. Again,
he`s going backwards. We`re moving forward. So they don`t even get the Hispanic community, obviously, because this is such a turnoff to the Hispanic community. And I think even to the younger Cuban community.
**Article & Video Linked at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49661267/#.UJP6ZkJ9nzJ
BelieveMe3
(134 posts)2nd attempt to early vote in Fla. lines are ridiculous.. 2-3 hour wait and I was there at 730. Rick Scott is accomplishing what he set out to do! Going back later when I can wait. This was at 2 different sites.
LukeFL
(594 posts)I waited two hrs last week and my sister waited four hrs last night.
Rick Scott want you to give and you did twice. Don't let him. Go back there and show Scott you are a determine voter.
Dont give up.
Daniel537
(1,560 posts)Our ballots have Spanish and Creole translations, so imagine those long ass constitutional amendments x3. It can get pretty confusing if you don't read clearly.
titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)I live in Palm Beach County. Ours was the pages front and back. The first section was to vote for President, then the US House, US Senate, state seats, judges, and then the stupid amendments. Then last a few local county things.
On edit...forgot to mention that we do have ours also in English and Spanish making it twice as big.
LP2K12
(885 posts)Three pages. One is double sided, one is a single.
Malikshah
(4,818 posts)though. Tied to the 11 amendments (voted NO on all w/o reading them as I'd done my research beforehand)
League of Women Voters explained them all and advised NO. As they emerged from the Legislature (more regressive than the Congress) I'd have voted NO anyway.
The problem is that it takes time to print out each ballot; then if you've not done your research it takes time to read them....
It is all part of the larger plan-- make it harder to vote; this gives the Republicans better odds.
It's simple: GOTV, NO on all Amendments, YES on retention of the three Supreme Court Justices (they're targeted by Scott and the regressive Legislature for having stymied their efforts), Obama, Dem Rep for congress, Nelson, Dem candidates for FL house/Senate, etc.
The problem is you put your double-sided Ballot in and get an I voted sticker as your only "receipt". Not even a screen to show how your ballot is being read by the machine....
csziggy
(34,120 posts)Small print, densely packed.
There are 12 constitutional amendments with the entire text of the amendment on the ballot. That takes up a lot of space. For me the choice on the amendments was easy: NO on all of them! Every one of those was introduced by the Republican legislature with no input from citizens.
Here's the thing - the Supervisors of Elections send out sample ballots a week or two before voting starts. People have the opportunity to read the whole thing and decide on who and what they are voting for well in advance. Here the poll workers were handing out sample ballots to voters standing in line so they could read it while waiting to vote.
I did my research and made a 'cheat sheet' to take in with me. Everything was condensed to a 3x5 piece of paper. I gave it to my husband to use when he went to vote.
Baitball Blogger
(46,574 posts)Anyone who goes into their precinct to vote uninformed will be overwhelmed.