The Daytona Beach News-Journal provides its opinion on how early voting under the new law increased turnout and resulted in a victory for Florida Republicans:
Lost in the heated rhetoric and debate on early voting in Florida
is the fact that the Sunshine State has already had a big election in
2012 — and early-voting turnout was great. Early voting in the
August 2012 primary was up 52 percent from August 2008. This impressive
showing followed the Republican-dominated Legislature’s passage of a
controversial election law that, among other things, decreased the
number of days in which in-person early voting was allowed.
Voters, apparently, can find their way to thepolls
— when real issues motivate them. Issues and hot elections drive
turnout. The length of the early-voting period — now eight days —
matters less. Previously,
election supervisors could offer up to 14 days of early voting. That
was changed in 2011 to eight days. State officials said 367,000 people
took advantage of early voting in the Aug. 14 primary. In the August
2008 primary, 240,000 voters cast ballots early, over more days.
…On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP won a battle in federal court, when Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, said he would accept the state’s eight-day early voting plan
in five counties that the federal government regulates because of past
racial discrimination. Those counties are Monroe, Hillsborough, Collier,
Henry and Hardee. Because of the federal regulation, those counties
were exempted from new rules in August — but they now have to follow
most of Florida’s 2011 election law. …
The
Justice Department is asking the state to still offer 96 hours of early
voting, in the eight days, which Scott plans to do. Scott’s plan also
has voting on a Sunday that previously did not have voting, according to
the Associated Press.
But
that doesn’t satisfy critics who believe black voters use early voting
more on the Sunday immediately preceding the general election. Florida
won’t be offering it then. Instead, according to the Florida Division of
Elections website, early voting begins 10 days before an election and
ends on the third day before any election in which there is a state or
federal office race.