Florida Legislature: a 72 page bill that reads like a hit list on voters ...

The State Legislature’s Latest Target? Florida’s Voters

By Carolyn Thompson

This week, in the eleventh hour of the legislative session, Florida's Senate unveiled a sweeping and unwarranted election bill that may be the country's most brazen attempt by state legislators to grab money, power, and influence by taking away the civil rights of eligible voters, including the elderly who use retirement center ID cards to vote. The tactics used are nothing more than the modern face of ”Jim Crow.” (please click, 'read more')

A committee amendment to SB 956, sponsored by Alex Diaz de le Portilla, seeks to sharply limit opportunities for voters to register to vote, present IDs at the polls, and update their address with election officials if they move.

The 72-page bill reads like a hit list on voters. To start, it attempts to put out of business third-party groups who help Floridians register to vote by imposing impossibly burdensome restrictions on their activities. These limitations, including one that would require third-party groups to submit all voter applications within 48 hours of receipt from the applicant, are even more restrictive than a previous law that a federal court in Miami found to be unconstitutional.

Denying voters this means of voter registration would disproportionately harm Floridians with low-income—who do not own cars or otherwise interface with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, where many Floridians register to vote. The third-party restrictions, some of the most stringent in the country, could also be subject to costly litigation for the state to defend. In a challenge to an earlier version of the third-party registration law that was struck down as unconstitutional, a federal court recently awarded plaintiffs $340,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs.

Even if a voter overcomes Florida’s high hurdles to voter registration, this bill would force more voters to vote a provisional, rather than regular, ballot. The bill limits the forms of acceptable voter ID a voter must produce before being given a regular ballot. It removes "retirement center" and "neighborhood association" identifications from the list of accepted IDs—a provision that will hit senior citizens and people with low incomes the hardest.

The bill also prohibits voters who have moved to submit a change-of-address form at the polls and vote with a regular ballot. Instead, voters who move and have not submitted a change of address form by the voter registration deadline will be forced to vote by provisional ballot, which may be rejected for administrative reasons unrelated to the voter’s eligibility to vote.

To top it off, voters who have questions or concerns on Election Day about voter IDs, provisional ballots, or other voting issues will be denied assistance from nonpartisan election monitors. The bill requires groups attempting to provide important nonpartisan assistance to voters waiting in line at polling places to remain 100 feet away from all voters.

The measures of SB 956 are repugnant. One wonders why the Senate is so eager to clamp down on voters when nothing happened during the November elections that could possibly justify the enactment of such harmful changes to Florida’s election code.

Carolyn Thompson is the Florida advocate for Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization with voter protection efforts in Florida.