Elections 2012: BFP Watch Party

[Martina]

From the Daily Beast posted at around 4pm today

everyone take a chug -- voter suppression

By mid-morning in Orange County, a critical piece of the "I-4 Corridor" between Tampa and Orlando, voters had waited three and four hours to cast ballots, at precincts they breezed through four years ago, some said. This, despite a phalanx of attorneys from the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights’s “Election Watch”, who were quickly dispatched to 50 precincts across Orlando to clear up bottlenecks.

David Glicken took the day off from his private practice to help, and arrived at Precinct 217 in the mostly African-American Pine Hills neighborhood, an hour before the polls opened at 7 a.m. He quickly found myriad problems there. No one was directing traffic, he told The Daily Beast, so it took some an hour to find a parking spot. At around 10 a.m., an Orange County Sheriff's patrol car cruised through the crowded parking lot, and appeared to be taking down license plate information—“Intimidation,” Glicken said. And there was no accommodation for people with disabilities — voter Tamara Barua told the Daily Beast she saw three disabled people fighting over a single chair.

That, it turned out, was only the beginning. The line grew quickly and into the hundreds of people, snaking through the narrow hallways and out to  Hiawassee Road. When Glicken walked inside to find out what was going on, he learned there were a half dozen polling stations but only two people checking addresses and checking people in. "It's ridiculous," said Tainese Middlebrooks, who waited three hours to vote. "I feel horrible. This took 20 minutes last time." Barua waited three and a half hours to vote, she said, and this was her third time trying. She tried twice to vote early but left to avoid long lines each time.

"I strongly feel this is voter supression," Barua said. "It seems they chose to eliminate resources. Glicken called the county's Supervisor of Elections. A staffer there told Glicken they had as many as two dozen people there who could be sent to crowded polling places, but that the precinct head had to specifically request it, he said. Glicken walked in and asked her to request it, and she refused, he said. So he called Election Watch for
backup.