By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : Voters in Florida were Tuesday confronted with the longest ballot in their history asking them not only to choose between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but a host of other issues.
The monster tabloid-size ballot includes 11 proposed amendments to the state constitution, some of which ran for hundreds of words.
Choices ranged from measures affecting healthcare reforms to a proposal by the Republican-controlled Florida legislature to curb the power of the state supreme court, which conservatives have frequently criticised as too liberal in its judgements.
Officials advised people to read the wording before arriving at polling places but lines still backed up as it took even those voters familiar with the ballots about 10 minutes to fill them out, according to a media report.
Others said they spent up to half an hour to complete the forms.
There are other signs of trouble too. Officials in Palm Beach county have spent the week painstakingly duplicating about 27,000 absentee ballots because a design flaw on the ballot papers meant the scanners could not read them.