Significant Changes to Florida State Election Laws

Florida Governor Rick Scott this week signed into law significant changes to state election laws that critics decry as radical restrictions on voter rights.

The new law:

    Dramatically reduces early voting. Early voting now is eight days long; previously, it was 15 days. Early voting is popular in Florida — usually, 20 percent of votes are cast early.

    Makes it harder for voter-registration drives to sign up new voters. The law now requires anyone doing registration to turn over documents within 48 hours, rather than the previous 10 days. Failure to do so could result in a fine for each case of late documents.

    Stops the long-held practice in Florida of allowing citizens who have moved from one county to another to register those changes at the polls before voting. Now, only voters moving within a county can do so. Others must cast a “provisional ballots,” which are counted only if needed to settle a close race.

    Made it easier to challenge absentee ballots. The law requires that voter signatures on ballots match, in strict fashion, signatures on file with elections offices. It allows no exceptions.

There are many other changes as well.

Scott on Thursday signed the legislation, HB 1355, quietly, with few comments. Others, however, had plenty to say — the governor’s office had been bombarded with messages and complaints.

Most complaints were from Democrats, who worry that the restrictions are being put in place now as a way to limit Democratic Party voting power in the 2012 election.

“As elected officials, we should not be implementing policies that stimulate voter suppression,” said a statement Thursday from State Representative Alan Williams, a Democrat from Tallahassee, the state capital. “There are many people who have protested, marched and died to create an environment that encourages and guarantees the right to vote for all citizens…. We had an opportunity to pass a bill that encouraged voter participation and that restored public faith in democracy and in the electoral process. But instead, we signed into law a bill that created a voting injustice.”

Non-partisan groups also complained. “This new law is a clear assault on Florida’s election process and will impact every Florida voter…,” Deirdre Macnab, president of the Florida League of Women Voters, told Politic365. “This law takes us back in time, and imposes unnecessary and punitive regulation on a process that is as American as apple pie … registering new voters.”

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, himself a Democrat, has asked the Justice Department to review the changes. Macnab said the Florida League of Women Voters would wait for results of that review before deciding whether to take the issue to court.

Macnab also said that as a result of the new restrictions, the Florida League of Women Voters has ceased voter registration, ending, at least temporarily, a commitment that goes back generations.

The voting restrictions were put in place by the Florida Legislature, which is dominated in both houses by the Republican Party. The party had little trouble passing the legislation, but it has struggled to justify it.

For example, State Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, had told the Florida Times-Union in April, when the law was just a bill, that the Legislature wanted to cut early voting out of fiscal responsibility. “There is a trickle of two to three people per day at a very high cost to keep those public libraries and polls open and people working them and so forth,” he said.

But as Times-Union reporter Matt Dixon noted in today’s editions, “There was more than a trickle in Jacksonville. In the first week of early voting for the city election, 16,230 people cast ballots during the first week. That’s a daily average of 2,318 compared to 3,190 during the remaining days. Overall, 20,152 Democrats, 14,728 Republicans, and 2,682 with no party affiliation voted early.”

The Jacksonville newspaper said 20 percent of votes were cast early in that city election, in which citizens chose Alvin Brown as mayor. He is the city’s first black mayor and first Democrat in that office in 20 years.

Republicans insist that the restrictions are needed to guard the integrity of the ballot.

“Under previous law, it was too easy for bad actors to game Florida’s voter registration system, and consequently our voters fell victim,” Diaz de la Portilla said in a statement. “It helps ensure that voters properly register and head to the polls at the right time. This is an issue that needs to be addressed and this bill upholds the significance of the voting process.”

“It is paramount to our democracy that we protect the credibility of Florida elections,” said a statement from State Rep. Seth McKell, R-Lakeland. “Each unlawful ballot takes away the vote of a Florida citizen casting a legal ballot.”
Republicans failed, however, to present evidence of rampant fraud. Lack of such has raises suspicion of the party’s motives.

Kurt Browning, who as Florida’s secretary of state is responsible for elections, told reporters Thursday that Florida has no problem with voter fraud.

Nevertheless, Scott, the governor, used the fraud argument Thursday. “I want people to vote, but I also want to make sure there’s no fraud involved in elections,” Scott said earlier. “All of us as individuals that vote want to make sure that our elections are fair and honest.”

Browning, who first served as secretary of state under Governor Charlie Crist and was reappointed by Scott, said the changes were “proactive” — that is, they were put in place to prevent problems that could, conceivably, happen one day.

That’s thin rationale, as even one Republican noted. “Florida has always been a state that has been open in having access to voting for legal residents. In fact, we brag about that,” State Senator Mike Fasano, one of only two Republican senators to vote against the bill, told the St. Petersburg Times. “This bill reduces that access.”

About the Author:

Bill Edmonds is Managing Editor to Politic365.com and a consultant in communications in Tallahassee, Florida. A native of Virginia, he has worked in the Florida capital for three decades in journalism, in public affairs and in communications. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Virginia Commonwealth University and a master’s in American Studies from Florida State University.

wtedmonds

Editor's note:

If these drastic changes are allowed to stand, watch for similar attacks on voting rights across the country.