Voting issues arise in key swing states

>>> i'm signing an executive order today that will allow an affidavit voting, where you can go to any polling place , if you're displaced, go to any polling place , sign an affidavit and you can vote in that polling place . but i think of it this way. compared to what we have had to deal with the past week, this will be a walk in the park going out and voting.

>> new york governor andrew cuomo made it a bit easier for sandy-affected residents to vote tomorrow. new jersey voters can also download a ballot and return their vote by fax or e-mail. reports of some form of voter irregularity are already happening in key battleground states in florida . lawyers for the florida democratic party settled a lawsuit today. voters waited in record long lines prompting officials in those three counties have agreed to allow voters to cast in person absentee ballots . long lines also persisted in ohio today where the number of early voting weekends were reduced from five to just one. ohio secretary of state john husted issued a directive last friday requiring voters to complete the identification section on provisional ballots rather than poll workers. if the form is not filled out correctly, then the ballot is not counted, democrats countered with an emergency motion. a federal judge in ohio will hold a hearing on the matter wednesday, the morning after the election. and in pennsylvania, civil rights and other community groups have sent a letter to assistant u.s. attorney general thomas perez alleging that the pennsylvania republican tea party are targeting african-american precincts under the guise of alleged fraud. they call upon the justice department monitoring to make every effort to ensure that voters are able to cast their ballots freely and fairly. joining me richard wolffe and from orlando, florida , joy reid. what is the latest in florida ?

>> it's a mess. i just got the phone with a friend of mine in south florida . people are still in line at the lone place where you can absentee early vote . people are fully taking advantage of it and it is proof that florida really needed those 14 days. the lines have been extraordinary throughout the state. five counties now out of 67 went ahead and allowed absentee voting on the spot, which means that in five counties you had more early vote time than you did in p the other 62 counties. that in and of itself it is unfair and in miami it is utter chaos.

>> let's listen to what steve schmidt told chuck todd this morning.

>> i think one of the things you always want to be for is you want everybody who is eligible to vote to vote and that's how you want to win elections. i think that all of the stuff that hags transpired over the last two years is in search of a solution to a problem. a voting fraud that doesn't really exist -- it's part of the mittology now in the republican party that there's wide spread voter froud across the country and now there's not.

>> it seems like more than mythology. okay, some mythology and an active willful attempt at voter suppression .

>> whether it's suppression or extreme restriction, it varies state by state. how ever you want to call it, the net effect is to deny people the chance, the opportunity to vote in the way they want it. when people are lining up for eight hours, they desperately want to vote. and steve schmidt, i was with him this morning on the set of " morning joe ." his heart says mitt romney is going to win this election. he believes in his gut that that's going to happen, even though his head is telling him something else. he is a partisan figure and he knows as a reasonable man that it's right in this country, the world's greatest democracy, that more people should vote than less. so why certain governors, certain state elected officials would want to put these restrictions in place is a thard thing to get to attorney to notice it's happening in so many places and so many of these officials are republican if not all of them. there is a pattern here and it's a troubling one.

>> joy, it is a battleground state republican officials where they know they control the outcome of this election.

>> it's disingenuous of anyone to say that it's mythology. it's not mythology, it's tack tacks. if you look at ohio , you have had about 45,000 people that voted earlier this year. despite the fact in ohio you had lines wrapped around the block. why is it fewer? because there's been fewer days. john husted has tried everything. he's tried getting rid of early voting , he's tried restrictions, shifting the ballot. he's doing everything he can to not let people vote. that's the opposite of his job.

>> thank you both for joining us tonight.

>>> coming up, we're waiting for the first lady and president obama to take the stage in des moines , iowa for his last campaign event. we'll take you there live when that happens.

>>> and it's been 27 days since mitt romney answered a question from that reporter. tonight someone got him to answer questions. we'll tell you who did it and what mitt said. that's coming up.

>>> and tomorrow night we'll have complete election coverage beginning right