360-Thousand Vote Early
August 23rd, 2010 by flanewsThe Primary Election is tomorrow and already more than 360-thousand Floridians have cast ballots. That’s up from the 260-thousand that voted early in the 2006 primary election. As Whitney Ray tells us, the spike in early voting could help results get out faster once the polls close tomorrow night.
Marlene Greenfield is retired and spends hours every week sculpting things out of clay. She has time to vote in Tuesday’s Primary, but she’ll use it to do more molding.
“We like to vote early, in fact we used to go downtown to the courthouse and we would have to stand in line just to vote early, but Monday we went up to the library and there was no line,” said Greenfield.
Marlene is one of more than 360-thousand Floridians who cast early ballots, a 30% increase from Florida’s 2006 Primary Election. Still most people prefer to vote on Election Day.
Sue Deasy was also sculpting Monday. She’s known who she’s going to vote for weeks, but refuses to vote early, citing tradition.
“It’s the energy of going to the polls that day and being a part of voting,” said Deasy.
The growing demand for convenience and new technology isn’t just changing when we vote; it’s also changing how fast we get results. The Division of Elections, will test a new website Tuesday, allowing viewers to single out races and view results fast than ever before.
“Our results are updated every three minutes and for the voter or interested person they can click on a county and see all the races by county or they can click specific races,” said Jennifer Krell Davis, a spokeswoman for he Division of Elections.
And the first results, which will include early and absentee votes, will go live shortly after polls in the Central time zone close. Starting tomorrow people who visit the Division of Elections website will be redirected to the Election Results Page. Those web addresses are: election.dos.state.fl.us and enight.elections.myflorida.com
Escoffery Running With Little Money
Most voters know the names of the major candidates that will appear on tomorrow’s primary ballot, but there are a handful of people making a run at office who don’t have millions of dollars pumped into their campaigns. Dr. Bill Escoffery III is a Fort Walton Beach doctor and lawyer who was born in Jamaica and moved to Florida 35 years ago. Escoffery is running against heavily favored Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination for US Senate. Escoffery says Rubio would benefit from a few more years in the private sector and worries that questions about his involvement with a State Republican Party money scandal could make him vulnerable to attacks or even an indictment.
“He still has some issues about GOP credit cards to answer and I believe that FBI investigation is ongoing. What’s going to happen if he wins the primary and gets out there against Crist with that? I don’t know,” said Escoffery.
Escoffery want to reverse the new health care law, place Christian values in the classroom and fight for state’s rights.
Posted in Elections, State News, Voting | No Comments »