Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I rise in support of my amendment, which is aimed at ensuring that a voter is not confused or misled by a bad ballot design that could lead to that voter overlooking a race--that is called an undervote--or even voting for the wrong candidate. I want to explain the problem, Madam Chair, and then what I suggest is the remedy because, unfortunately, I have seen a bad ballot design basically cause chaos in my home State of Florida in two recent past elections. First, I want to go back to the 2000 Presidential race, Gore v. Bush, where a very--unfortunately, a famous--poorly designed butterfly ballot confused voters in Palm Beach County. Many elderly citizens who thought they were voting for Al Gore actually voted for Pat Buchanan. Why was this significant? Because we had a Presidential race where 6 million voters voted and it was decided by 500-plus votes, and Pat Buchanan got an unexpected 3,400 votes in a very liberal Palm Beach County. Then, again, just recently in the 2018 midterms, again, in a very close Senate race, this time a race that was about a 12,000-vote margin, more than 30,000 voters in Broward County did not make a choice in a U.S. Senate race. It is arguable that this is because the Senate candidates' names were under a set of long instructions, and according to experts, people don't read long instructions, and then they overlooked this Senate race. So this amendment makes a good attempt to remedy this situation.…”