Let's Kill the 100 Foot Rule in Miami at Polls Like They Did in Fort Myers. By SunshineUnderground

Petitions: Somewhere in South Florida, a lawyer's phone is ringing...

A Circuit Court ruling in Fort Myers last week could allow anyone organizing a petition drive in Miami to sue the state for the right to approach voters after they have cast their ballots. The current state law requires petitioners to remain 100 feet away from the polls.

The ruling, by Judge John Steele, only applied to local election in Fort Myers, but James McGuire, one of the attorneys at Thomas and LoCicero who worked on the case, told me that whether or not the ruling becomes a legal precedent will depend on if the judge decides to publish it in something called the official reporter, and that has yet to be decided. He suggested that the state legislature might change the statue so it's in line with the ruling, but that could take awhile. In the meantime, McGuire suggested that other petitioners might want to consider filing their own lawsuits to change the petition law in their own jurisdiction.

"You might see people in similar positions bring similar suits and rely upon this as precedent, and then maybe we'll start to have pockets of places throughout the state where this is being permitted, and again, the state legislature might find itself in a position where, for the sake of consistency, it has to go back and change the law or decide not to enforce it against petition circulators throughout the state," McGuire said. (Click read more for the rest):

Currently, by state statute, a petitioner cannot approach voters within 100 feet of a polling place, even after the voters have cast their ballots. The same rule does not apply to organizations conducting those ever-so-useful exit polls. One hundred feet may be farther than you realize - it's outer edge of the parking lot far, or out on the street, dodging traffic with a clipboard in your hands far. It is 1/3 the size of a football field.

The ACLU filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of the law to support an effort by the NAACP and others to collect the signatures necessary to put a proposal on the ballot for the creation of a civilian oversight panel for the Fort Myers Police Department. Their argument, presented by Paul McAdoo, of the firm Thomas and LoCicero, and ACLU attorney Muslima Lewis, was that: Allowing petitioners to approach voters who had already cast their ballots would not interfere with the election, and on Friday, U.S. District Judge John Steele agreed, issuing an injunction that allowed petitioners to seek the signature of anyone who had already cast a vote in the Aug. 27 local elections.

The elections went off without a hitch, so the justification for the law would seem to be, well, nonexistent, but the judge's injunction only applied to Fort Myers for that specific election, and the secretary of elections has since filed an appeal. It may be only a mater of time before someone files a similar suit in Miami-Dade.

So long as incumbents have a nearly unassailable financial advantage in local elections, petition drives to put issues directly before the voters on the ballot box will continue to be an indispensable tool for community activists pushing for projects that go against the wishes of big business or developers, and this ruling in Fort Myers could give such petition drive organizers reason to hope. Somewhere in South Florida, a lawyer's phone is ringing.
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