Florida Politics

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FLORIDA POLITICS

Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

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The Blog for Sunday, May 01, 2005

Hasterok

If the state Senate goes along, voting will become more difficult and elections will become more expensive.

House Republicans passed a bill last week that would limit early voting to eight hours a day and eight hours total on weekends. ... It further restricts weekend voting, an important feature for fulltime workers.

Early voting proved unexpectedly popular last year, with almost 20 percent of voters casting ballots before Election Day, including by absentee ballot. That led to long lines and short tempers in some places and a vow by supervisors of elections to do better.

So the supervisors asked lawmakers to permit them to keep early voting sites open longer and to offer more polling places. Incredibly, Republican legislators rejected them on both requests. (All Democrats voted for the measure.) ...

Democrats conclude that if more voters go to the polls, their party fares better. And early voting is particularly helpful to lower-income Floridians -- a Democratic stronghold -- for whom getting to the precinct on election Tuesday can be difficult.

Republicans deny any sinister intent, saying they simply want to cut costs and labor for election supervisors. But that's not what supervisors asked for. They want to expand, not curtail, early voting.

It doesn't take a genius though to make sense of why the House voted to eviscerate a law limiting the amount candidates can spend on their campaigns. In Florida's current conservative era, Republicans control state politics and collect the lion's share of campaign cash. The more money they're allowed to spend, the more likely it is they'll have an advantage over their Democratic opponents. ...

The House raised the limit to $21 million for gubernatorial candidates and $10 million for Cabinet contenders. In other words, no limits at all. Bush and Democratic opponent Bill McBride didn't raise $20 million between them in 2002; all candidates combined received just $5 million from the state.

If passed, the bill not only hurts the public in its pocketbook -- after all, it's taxpayer dollars we're talking about -- it harms their innate interest in fair elections as well. It does exactly what the original law attempted to prevent -- a candidate from buying his way into political office.

Making it more inconvenient for folks to vote and more expensive for them to run is nothing to brag about.

House ploy restricts early voting, raises spending limits