Saturday, February 15, 2014

Words come back to haunt supervisor of elections


“Do you read the stories about the people in Africa? The people in the desert, who literally walk two- and 300 miles so they can have the opportunity to do what we do — and we want to make it more convenient?”

Mike Bennett must rue the day in May 2011 when he said those words as a Republican state senator.
Especially this past week.
Now Manatee County’s supervisor of elections, Bennett presented a strategic plan Tuesday to dramatically streamline the county’s voting precincts — cutting them from 99 to 69 — while adding five polling places and three early voting sites.
The new arrangement actually has logistical merit, adapting SOE resources to meet the growth in public preference for early voting and voting by mail.
Yet the downside of Bennett’s blueprint is striking and makes people with long memories recall those inflammatory words of three years ago, not to mention his career as a partisan Florida legislator.

Read more Sunday in Mannix About Manatee on Bradenton.com.

1 comment:

  1. It's crafty the way Bennett avoids using the word “fair”. His rhetoric implies that most American voters are too lazy to show up to the polls. Although this blog fails to mention where the 1/3 disenfranchised polling is to take place, multiple sources elsewhere point out that the intended cuts are to be felt almost exclusively throughout minority precincts. Will this help Bennett and his shrinking cadre of backers win more elections? We shall see.

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