Secretary of State Ken Detzner will take a team of six to counties next week to review what has been deemed unsatisfactory handling of the general election.
Meanwhile, supervisors from the states five underperforming general election handling counties will be asked to appear before a Senate committee next month to describe just what went wrong in their agencies.
Detzner noted that the lengthy ballot -- 10 pages in Miami-Dade where three languages are required -- contributed to long lines, but said additional factors were in play in each county.
While the fact-finding is under way, senators already questioned the decision-making of some election supervisors for how they handled the early voting period, where people waited up to six hours to vote in some counties.
If you have long lines at McDonald, you open another McDonalds down the street; they had every opportunity to open up, said Rep. Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, who also said the state may need to consider giving the secretarys office more power to intervene into counties experiencing election problems.
Detzner told members of the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, meeting for the first time on Tuesday, that his audit team will spend a week visiting the election offices of independent election supervisors in Hillsborough, Lee, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward and St. Lucie counties.
He noted that 62 of the states 67 counties performed adequately during the general election, and all but one completed the counting process on time.
It may not have been to the liking of CNN and national forecasters, but they met their obligations for unofficial and official results, Detzner said.
St. Lucie County was the only county that wasnt able to complete its unofficial results within four days as required bystate law and the official results within 12 days.
The supervisors of Lee, Miami-Dade, Broward and St. Lucie will be asked to address the committee during an all-day session in January, said Committee Chairman Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater.
Hillsborough County, which had some long lines, was not listed as underperforming in the general election, while the other counties had reports of long lines, broken tabulating machines, incorrect ballots and misplaced ballots.
Detzner said he wants to meet with officials in Hillsborough County to set the tone and benchmarks for when reviewing the other counties.
He also credited Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez for setting up his own task force to investigate what went wrong in the election.
Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, asked for early voting hours to also be investigated.
Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, noted state records indicate that in Miami-Dade County, where people waited up to six hours to vote, only 22 of at least 83 possible early voting sites were open.
Sen. John Thrasher, R-Clearwater, requested that supervisors from counties that performed well also be asked to address the committee.
Latvala advised the committee that the eyes of Florida voters and the nation are on their reform efforts.
Florida always seems to be one of the last states in the nation to make a decision in these close political races and that the committee must determine if the problem is systemic or because the state is ideologically evenly divided, he said.
Reach Jim Turner at jturner@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 215-9889.
