Brennan Center for Justice

Contact: Tim Bradley, (646) 452-5637
             Tia Gordon, (202) 906-0149

Association of Florida
Election Supervisors Announces Election Day Solution for No-Match Voters

Advocates Urge County
Election Supervisors to Adopt On-site Verification Procedures for Nov 4th

Florida - Today the Brennan
Center for Justice and Advancement Project called on Florida's 67 county
election supervisors to allow "unmatched" voters to present identification on
Election Day that will resolve any registration verification issues and ensure
that thousand of voters will be allowed to cast regular ballots that will be
counted on November 4th. The groups'
letter follows Tuesday's announcement from the Florida State
Association of Supervisors of Elections that local supervisors can and should
create procedures to verify voters who do not match in state databases on
Election Day and thereby prevent thousands of voters from being forced to cast
provisional ballots that often go uncounted and disenfranchise voters. 
Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who initially took the position that county
election officials were prohibited from developing an Election Day solution,
has acknowledged in recent public statements that they are authorized to do so.

"This is a major victory for
Florida's voters," said Adam Skaggs, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.
"Tuesday's announcement from the association of state election supervisors is a
directive to every county that they can and should adopt procedures to verify
any unmatched voters, including at the polls on Election Day. Supervisors of
elections have the authority - and responsibility - to reduce the chances that
eligible voters' ballots go uncounted on Election Day, and that includes 'no
match' voters," Skaggs stated.

"We strongly urge country
election supervisors to adopt Election Day solutions for un-matched voters,"
stated Elizabeth Westfall, senior attorney at the Advancement Project.  "These solutions will ensure that voters are not
disenfranchised by typos or other bureaucratic errors, and will protect the
integrity of the election by ensuring that all eligible voters have their votes
counted," Westfall continued.

As highlighted in today's New
York Times editorial, Florida's "no-match, no-vote" law has threatened to
deny thousands of eligible Florida citizens the right to have their votes
counted this election. 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 for verifying a voter's
registration. 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,
approximately 9,000 voters are still being kept off the rolls. An analysis of
the list of blocked voters reveals that African Americans make up 39% of
blocked voters whose race is known, and Latinos make up 34% of blocked voters
whose race is known.

"By adopting an Election Day solution that will ensure
eligible citizens' votes are counted, election supervisors can reduce
bureaucratic burdens on voters and election administrators and head off any
controversy over voters whose votes are unnecessarily - and unconstitutionally
- rejected on November 4th," said Wendy Weiser, director of voting
rights and elections at the Brennan Center

The voting advocates' letter also urges election supervisors
to conduct public education through their websites, public service
announcements, and other means of communication in order to apprise unverified
voters of the state's revised policy and provide steps that unverified voters
may take on Election Day to ensure that they will be permitted to vote by
regular ballot.

The October 21st letter from the Florida State
Association of Supervisors of Elections is available upon request.

More information about "no
match, no vote" in Florida, including the Brennan Center's challenge the law
filed in 2007, is available here.

Visit the Brennan Center website
for additional resources on Current
Voter Suppression Incidents, a report
on all 50 states' readiness for Election Day voting problems, the secret
and error-prone practice of vote purging,
a debunking of voter fraud claims
nationwide, the only comprehensive study of how
states implement the data matching provisions like Florida's, and the
Brennan Center's proposal for Universal
Voter Registration - a way to make sure every eligible citizen in the
country is registered to vote