Voting Advocacy - Florida
No Match, No Vote
On September 8, 2008, the Florida Secretary of State instructed election officials to reject voter registration applications that do not pass an error-prone computer match process. In the first three weeks of the policy, 15% of registrations were initially bounced because of failed computer matches; election officials were able to catch and correct obvious typos in about ¾ of these cases, but to date more than 12,000 voters are being kept off the rolls. An analysis of the list reveals that African Americans make up 39% of blocked voters, and Latinos make up 34% of blocked voters whose race is known. There was not enough time for election officials to correct the errors in the tens of thousands of registrations that came in right, but there is some reason for optimism. On October 21, 2008, legal counsel for the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections issued a legal opinion stating that election officials could implement an Election Day solution in which un-matched voters could resolve matching problems at the polls, ensuring that their votes will count.
The Brennan Center and other groups called upon the supervisors to adopt a polling-place solution. Even Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who initially took the position that county election officials were prohibited from developing an Election Day fix, has acknowledged in recent public statements that they are authorized to do so. More information about "no match, no vote" in Florida, including the pending lawsuit filed by the Brennan Center in 2007, is available here.
Voter Registration
On April 28, 2008, the Brennan Center, along with the Advancement Project and Debevoise and Plimpton filed a lawsuit on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of its members, the AFL-CIO of Florida, and AFSCME Council 79 challenging a revised Florida voter registration law that imposes prohibitive fines on voter registration groups and risks preventing eligible Florida citizens from registering and voting in the 2008 elections.
The revised Florida law, which closely resembles an earlier version of the law declared unconstitutional in federal court in 2006—see League of Women Voters of Florida v. Cobb and related documents below—will produce a serious chilling effect on registration drives and dampen turnout in November. It will also disproportionately burden African-American and Hispanic voter applicants and applicants from Spanish-speaking households, who are twice as likely to register to vote through voter registration drives as white applicants or applicants from English-speaking households.
The law creates a punishing and complicated tiered regime of deadlines and fines: $50 fines for each form turned in more than 10 days after collection; $250 for each form turned in past a registration deadline; and $500 for each lost form. The fines apply to each and every form that is lost or late. The fines are $250, $500 and $1000, respectively, for any group or individual found to have done any of the above willfully.
The full list of plaintiffs in the suit is: League of Women Voters of Florida; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 79 (AFSCME); Florida AFL-CIO; and Marilyn Wills, president of the Tallahassee League of Women Voters. Plaintiffs are represented by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the Advancement Project, and by pro bono counsel Debevoise & Plimpton, and Becker & Poliakoff, P.A.
For more information, click here.