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Recommendations for Increased Accessibility& Efficiency in Florida Elections Florida Department of State Due to varying populations, geography and voting habits in Florida counties, "one size does not fit all" for early voting days and hours. Lesser populated counties can be overburdened with extended early voting hours because they are not cost effective or necessary for voters to avoid long lines. Alternatively, some of the higher populated counties can benefit by having longer early voting hours and days. The Sunday before Election Day, in particular, is an example of a "one size does not fit all" day. The vast majority of supervisors of elections prefers and needs to use this Sunday as a day to prepare for Election Day. However, some supervisors of elections strongly believe they are capable of conducting organized elections while also offering this regionally popular day of voting to their voters. Current Florida law restricts early voting locations to the main or branch offices of supervisors of elections, city halls and permanent public libraries. In many circumstances, these sites lack adequate floor space to accommodate voting equipment and voters, have insufficient security and present other logistical issues such as limited parking space for election staff and voters who frequently have to compete with each other and/or the public who are using other parts of the facilities for non-election purposes. If given the flexibility to choose more and larger sites, supervisors could more effectively select early voting locations that meet the geographic needs of their voters and reduce the wait times at these locations. C. Ballot Length The Florida Legislature included 11 proposed constitutional amendments on the 2012 General Election ballot. The additional language for voters to read and consider greatly contributed to the longer than usual lines at polling places. For several counties, compounding the issue of I 1 proposed constitutional amendments was the federal requirement to provide as many as two foreign translations, which extended the ballot up to 12 pages in some areas. As of 2011, 14 counties in Florida must provide the ballot in Spanish. In addition to the time it took to read the amendments, multi-page ballots required more time to place ballots through tabulators and more time to tabulate each ballot. Printing different ballots for each language has been raised as a way to shorten the ballot length, but this option would be expensive for counties and complicated to administer. Unlike other public measures and constitutional amendments proposed by initiative, proposed constitutional amendments by the Legislature are not bound by a 75-word ballot summary limitation. This lack of any word limitation permits the limitless length of a ballot. Additionally, the legislature has the ability to place the full text of a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Florida Statutes presently require that by December 31, 2013, all voting systems must permit the full coded text of constitutional amendments to be placed on a ballot. Therefore, the length of the ballot could possibly be longer if these statutes are implemented. Moreover, implementation issues exist involving the stricken and underlined text on voting systems for visibly impaired voters that will make the section difficult, if not impossible, to conform to federal requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act. I3• �'- s