“Overall, there is plenty of blame to go around for our voting problems at both the state and local level,” Jewett said.

Susan MacManus, a University of Southern Florida professor, said the more relevant information is what happened on a local level, in the counties that had the long lines or problems. “I don’t ever like to use aggregate statewide figures when you have concentrated areas of problems,” she said.

Many problems occurred in South Florida, for example, where turnout increased only slightly.

In Miami-Dade turnout dropped from about 70 percent in 2008 to 67.6 percent in 2012. The number of voters increased only slightly, by about 16,000. Miami-Dade faced a shortage of temporary workers and equipment, and the county decided to delay a plan to redraw precincts to reduce crowding.

Broward had a bigger dip in turnout percentage but a similar increase in voters — and again, that doesn’t explain problems, such as finding 963 ballots in the elections warehouse after Election Day.

Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told the Sun-Sentinel that her office "got thrown off its game" with a lawsuit that allowed in-person absentee voting the Sunday and Monday before Election Day, days that were meant to prepare precincts and tabulate absentee ballots."

The ruling

In fact-checking Detzner’s statement, though, he’s right that the sheer number of voters was a record, at 8.5 million. Also, he’s correct that more people “than ever before” voted early or absentee. But it was not the highest turnout by percentage. We rate Detzner’s claim Mostly True.