JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Rhonda Victor joins us from a polling place in West Kendall in of the suburbs of – is it Miami?
RHONDA VICTOR:
Yes, it is, John.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Hi, Rhonda. Thanks so much for being with us. You are getting ready to vote, right?
RHONDA VICTOR:
No, sir, I voted a week and a half ago, I'm pleased to say.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
You know, which is the other –
OVERTALK]
RHONDA VICTOR:
I'm watching others vote.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
- which is the other interesting thing about Florida. You did have early voting, unlike Pennsylvania - there may be a tsunami today - but you've already had many, many people come to the polls. What are you seeing?
RHONDA VICTOR:
We've had – almost one-fourth of the entire electorate of the state of Florida has either voted early or via absentee ballot. And people across the state are really hopeful, with their fingers crossed, that that's going to make thing go a little smoothly this year.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
What's it look like right where you are?
RHONDA VICTOR:
Where I'm at I'm seeing about 200 people in line. I'm at a middle school where a portable classroom has been converted to a polling place. It is steady, but I have to say that it's very, very slow. They're only allowing eight people into the room at a time.
We have just switched to our third type of voting equipment in the past eight years, which is a bubble-in [?] ballot and optical scanner. And it takes a bit of time for people to fill out those ballots and then scan them in. They only have eight booths for people to fill out the ballots and then two optical scanners.
So it is moving slowly. People have been in line – you know, it's almost an hour since the polls opened at 7 o'clock. People started lining up here at 5:30 a.m., and many of those people that were here prior to 7 o'clock are still in line.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Is there a mix of people or is it the people you typically see on Election Day?
RHONDA VICTOR:
Well [LAUGHS], I see voters. I can tell you that this precinct is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We have a – a little more than half of the registrants here are of Hispanic origin and the rest, a mix of everybody else. And I'm seeing all ages, I am, from old to kids on skateboards.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
All right. And you are a reporter for who exactly? I just don't have the information.
RHONDA VICTOR:
I actually am a reporter for The Miami Herald, which broadcasts –
[OVERTALK]
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
For The Miami Herald. Of course.
RHONDA VICTOR:
- The Miami Herald, which broadcasts on NPR affiliate WLRN.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Absolutely. Actually, you guys share a newsroom there, Rhonda. So -
RHONDA VICTOR:
Well, we have – the radio studios are in the middle of the Miami Herald newsroom -
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
[LAUGHS]
RHONDA VICTOR:
- and we broadcast on WLRN, which is the NPR affiliate for South Florida.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Why is Florida so close at this point?
RHONDA VICTOR:
You know, people from Florida are from all other parts not only of this country but other countries, especially south of the border, and they're very passionate in how they feel.
It's generally, you know, considered the state's divided in half, or South Florida a little more urban, a little more liberal, except for the Cuban-American population, which tends to lean quite conservative.
North Florida's more considered the Southern part of the United States. There's a Bible Belt. They're very conservative.
And then the central part of the state, which is known as the I-4 Corridor, that stretches from, like, Daytona Beach through Orlando into Tampa, is a hodgepodge of it all. It's kind of where red and blue mixes into purple. [LAUGHS] And -
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
And we'll be watching it all, Rhonda. That's great. Thank you so much for joining us.
RHONDA VICTOR:
Okay, good luck.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY:
Rhonda Victor, from The Miami Herald and WLRN, there in Miami, our partner station.
