Gov. Rick Scott said Florida won’t create a mandated health insurance exchange program and will opt out of Medicaid expansion. (Photo by Gaston De Cardenas/Fundación España Florida.)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
On CNN Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott admitted that an important provision in the voting law he signed in 2011 is flawed.
He told Soledad O’Brien on CNN’s “Starting Point” that the state needed more early voting days in the wake of this year’s disastrous presidential election in Florida.
Last year, the GOP-led Legislature signed a controversial law that cut early voting days, made it harder to register voters, and changed a slew of other things.
Voting rights advocates and experts warned lawmakers that the law could create problems at the polls, as well as make it harder to vote for minorities, students and low-income voters. However, Scott signed the bill into law anyway.
Experts and Democratic lawmakers have blamed the law for Florida’s extremely long lines at the polls and ballot counting problems that lasted well beyond Election Day. Now, Scott is agreeing with them.
According to The Palm Beach Post:
It’s the first time Scott, a Republican who came under harsh criticism for refusing to extend the number of early voting days this year, has said the early voting period should be longer. “We’ve got to restore confidence in our elections,” Scott said.
The governor highlighted three things the state should based on conversations Secretary of State Ken Detzner had with supervisors in “low-performance” counties, including Palm Beach.
- Length of the ballot: Scott held up a Miami-Dade County ballot that was 12 pages long because it had to be printed in English, Spanish and Creole. “This took some people 40 minutes to get through. There were local issues, state issues. And it was just too long,” he said.
- Early voting sites: Scott agreed with supervisors who have for years asked for more flexibility in early voting sites, now limited to city halls, public libraries and elections offices or branches that have been open more than a year.
- Number of early voting days: “We’ve got to go back and look at number of days we have,” Scott said.
Scott eventually blamed the Republicans in the Legislature for changing the early voting days in the bill (HB 1355), which he signed into law.
Right now, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner is traveling the state trying to find out what happened in Florida that caused all the problems on Election Day.
The same day Scott made this appearance on CNN, Quinnipiac University released a poll that said 52 percent of Florida voters do not believe Scott deserves a second term as Florida’s governor and 53 percent of GOPers want another member of the party to challenge Scott in his re-election bid.