Thursday March 28th, 2024 5:05AM

Long lines at early voting sites in the South

By The Associated Press
MIAMI - Unprecedented numbers of early voters in Florida and other southern states are prompting election officials to add equipment, extend schedules and hand out water and chairs to make people comfortable as they wait for hours to cast their ballots.

About 150,000 people cast ballots Monday and Tuesday, the first two days of early voting in Florida.

"It doesn't matter if there's lines," 81-year-old Doris Vance, a Barack Obama supporter in Pompano Beach, Fla., said Wednesday. "I knew there would be lines, but I don't mind it. The weather is good."

The Sunshine State is again key this election season, with a prize of 27 electoral votes - 10 percent of the 270 needed to clinch the election. The state's disputed election in 2000 gave the presidency to George W. Bush, and he captured the state in 2004. This year, Republican John McCain and Democrat Obama are locked in a close race.

The excitement of casting a ballot in the presidential race has outweighed the long lines for hundreds of thousands of early voters nationwide, including in several key battleground states like Florida, Ohio and Nevada.

Voters in every state can cast early ballots and results won't be released until Nov. 4. About a third of the entire electorate is expected to vote early this year.

In Georgia, an elderly woman collapsed in the heat on Tuesday while waiting - but officials say she soon recovered. Early voters there were already double the number in 2004. As of Wednesday, some 825,000 had cast their ballots, about 15 percent of Georgia's registered voters. The state has 15 electoral votes.

And in North Carolina, which also has 15 electoral votes, more than a half-million people have cast ballots, prompting at least one county to add several days to the schedule at a handful of sites.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., arrived at noon at his Miami polling site on Monday and realized it would be hours before he was able to vote. He ended up grabbing an absentee ballot and meeting with supervisors of elections in two South Florida counties to try to ease the bottleneck.

As a result, Miami-Dade County agreed to update its Web site with wait times, added machines that voters use to sign for their ballots and provided chairs for senior citizens at each location. In the first two days of early voting, 25,388 people cast ballots in Miami-Dade - about 3,000 more than the first two days of early voting in 2004. Early voting ends Nov. 2 in the state.

Some voters have taken to cruising past polling places to see where, and when, the lines are shortest.

"I came on Monday, saw that the lines were really bad," said Yolanda Consuelo Rams, a McCain supporter in Plantation, Fla. "I also drove by on Tuesday and spoke to some people and they said they had been waiting for more than eight hours. When I came by Wednesday I saw that the lines weren't as long, so I thought that this was a great time for me to do it."

Ensuring voting machines are ready for the load also is a priority.

In Jacksonville, Fla., some optical scanning machines flashed a message Monday that the ballots were too large. Officials say they were replaced and voting continued.

In Broward County, each ballot must be printed when the voter checks in. However, Mary Cooney, a spokeswoman for the supervisor of elections, said each early voting site in the county has only two printers.

"If you can only process four voters at a time, you're bound to wait," she said.

Broward added 42 optical scanners and 229 voting booths to the 17 early voting sites in that county. Officials have not been able to get more printers from national vendors.

In North Carolina, despite some hours-long waits, elections leaders are encouraging people to take advantage of the one-stop sites, fearing that Election Day lines could be even longer. Wake County - home of the state capital, Raleigh - extended added several days of voting to the schedule at a handful of sites.

Metro Atlanta polling sites are reporting thousands of voters piling into the centers each day, with two-hour waits in some places. Registrars are urging voters to bring chairs, umbrellas, water - and something to pass the time.

"Maybe something to read, and a little bit of patience," said Robert Quigley, a Cobb County spokesman.
© Copyright 2024 AccessWDUN.com
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.