A day after activists demanded the creation of a bipartisan task force to determine why the Florida 2012 general election went wrong, two Florida Democrats announced that they filed legislation that will essentially repudiate HR 1355 — the controversial 2011 elections reform bill that reduced this year's early voting days in the Sunshine State from 14 to eight.
On Wednesday morning, St. Petersburg Rep. Darryl Rouson called for the new legislation at a press conference at Tampa's Lykes Gaslight Park where he was joined by local Democrats, as well as former Gov. Charlie Crist — a political independent who has been outspoken in criticizing what happened at the polls last week.
"Florida was the laughing stock of the nation again this year when it came to voting, and we ought to be tired of that," Rouson declared, a reference to the state's voting problems that surfaced back in 2000, when it took 36 days to declare a winner in the state's presidential election, due to the intervention by the state and U.S. Supreme Court. This time around it "only" took four days, but elected officials from both parties in the state have agreed that they need to examine what went wrong last week.
But Rouson doesn't think much about the idea of creating a task-force to study what went wrong.
"We're always task forcing and studying stuff," he replied with disdain. "We know what happened. We saw … I'm not in favor of more task forces and more study groups … it's time for action."
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2012.