The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist: on Government Reform

Charlie Crist: Require paper backup for all electronic voting machines

At my urging and without much fuss, the legislature passed a bill requiring paper backup for all voting machines. The fact that the federal government would cover the $28 million price tag didn't hurt.

"It just makes common sense," I said that day. "You go to an ATM machine, you get a receipt. You go to a gas station, you probably don't like the receipt you get, but you get a receipt. And with the most precious, cherished right we have in a democracy, we deserve to have a record so we can verify."

Charlie Crist: Give former felons a second chance at voting rights

Nobody's perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. People deserve a second chance. Isn't that the very basis of our democracy and religious faith?

I quickly came to see that restoring the rights of ex-felons would be controversial. All my Republican friends seemed to be certain about what was waiting for us down this path: If we invited thousands of ex-felons back onto Florida's voting rolls, the vast majority wouldn't be voting for us.

"Just look at 'em," I heard more than one Republican say. "Those are Democrats." The laws that kept most ex- felons from voting in Florida went back 136 years. That was the Jim Crow era after the Civil War. Slavery was over. But white judges and politicians in the South were doing everything they could to make sure the newly freed slaves were still kept down.

Jeb Bush: No conspiracy of hackers manipulating electronic voting

The new system the counties chose was touch-screen voting machines. Soon enough, 15 Florida counties had signed on. But that didn't work out too well. The costs were high. The glitches were constant. And worst of all, no one seemed to trust the electronic counts. Without paper records, how did voters know their choices were being accurately recorded? How could anyone be sure some evil hacker wasn't manipulating the results? Jeb dismissed those fears as "conspiracy theories." But in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, the Republican Party of Florida sent out fliers urging their voters to use absentee ballots because of the disturbing absence of a paper trail from the Election Day machines.

Jeb Bush: 2005: Disallowed early voting in schools or churches

But Republican leaders in the House and Senate would have none of that. They moved to curtail early voting instead. The early-voting schedule was cut again--from 12 hours to 8 hours a day. Strict limits were placed on where the early voting could occur. No more schools or churches or community centers. Now the early ballots could be cast only in election offices, libraries, & city halls.

The rollbacks sailed through the House, 82-36, on a largely party line vote. Over the objection of Democrats and local election officials, Jeb signed the reductions into law on June 20, 2005, a year and a half before I came in.