A judge has denied former Gov. Charlie Crist's request to extend voting by two hours in Broward County.
Evelyn Perez-Verdoa, elections spokeswoman for the county, confirmed the judge's ruling but gave no other immediate details.
Crist's campaign filed the motion Tuesday night, shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m. in most of the state. Crist cited voter confusion and malfunctions in a release:
- "The polling station located at the Croissant Park Elementary School was offline for over an hour and a half this morning – this caused major delays and impacted voters looking to cast a ballot before work."
- "EVID malfunctions in precincts throughout the county caused confusion among voters who were unable to update their address at polling precincts. Those voters were bounced between local precincts and SOE headquarters – ultimately, the system did not register them and they were unable to cast regular ballots."
- "The delay and confusion caused by those EVID malfunctions compounded county-wide confusion related to recent re-precincting. We have reports in many cases that voters who were confused about their proper polling location were provided conflicting information and, in many cases, simply gave up attempting to cast a regular ballot."
According to the motion, malfunctions with some addresses caused voters to be bounced between precincts, and ultimately the system didn't register them. They weren't able to cast regular ballots, the motion says.
In August, legislators adopted a new map that alters seven of the state's existing 27 districts.
Crist's campaign says those changes confused voters. He says they received conflicting information about where to vote, which discouraged many.