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Elections Chief: Online Voting Deadline Risky

Florida Secretary of State

The Senate Appropriations Committee turned up the heat Thursday on Governor Rick Scott’s top elections chief to implement an online voter registration system by 2017. As Jim Ash reports, Secretary of State Ken Detzner warned it would cause a quote, “train wreck.”

Detzner said his office was already in the middle of a major computer overhaul and adding the new system risked a breakdown in next year’s presidential election.  Democratic Senator Jeff Clemens of Lake Worth, the bill’s sponsor, wasn’t buying it.

“But I would just let the rest of the committee know that in the rest of many states, they have implemented this type of online voting registration application in four months. I’m giving him two and a half years here.”

Twenty other states have online registration systems and four are in the middle bringing it online. The bill heads next to the Senate floor.

A Miami native, former WFSU reporter Jim Ash is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years of experience, most of it in print. He has been a member of the Florida Capital Press Corps since 1992.