Unions tell Florida Supreme Court: Provisional Ballot Law Disenfranchises Voters
/Eligible Voters will not be allowed to vote if they go to the wrong place to vote.
Florida's provisional ballot law violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises otherwise eligible voters who try to cast ballots outside of the precinct they have been assigned, union attorneys told the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. Under the Florida Constitution, voters are qualified as residents of a particular county - not as residents in a precinct, San Francisco attorney Jonathan Weissglass told the justices in oral arguments. Weissglass represents the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Service Employees International Union. The unions want Florida's high court to keep most of the provisional ballot law in place but to overturn the provision that requires ballots be cast by voters in the proper precinct. Attorneys for Secretary of State Glenda Hood and elections officials defended the law, arguing the precinct provision was a reasonable regulation, like closing polls at 7 p.m. And they warned that any new requirements created by the courts would lead to chaos. [more
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Florida's provisional ballot law violates the state constitution because it disenfranchises otherwise eligible voters who try to cast ballots outside of the precinct they have been assigned, union attorneys told the state Supreme Court on Wednesday. Under the Florida Constitution, voters are qualified as residents of a particular county - not as residents in a precinct, San Francisco attorney Jonathan Weissglass told the justices in oral arguments. Weissglass represents the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Service Employees International Union. The unions want Florida's high court to keep most of the provisional ballot law in place but to overturn the provision that requires ballots be cast by voters in the proper precinct. Attorneys for Secretary of State Glenda Hood and elections officials defended the law, arguing the precinct provision was a reasonable regulation, like closing polls at 7 p.m. And they warned that any new requirements created by the courts would lead to chaos. [more
]- Purpose of Lawsuit: The special ballot known as a provisional
ballot is intended to help prevent disenfranchising voters whose names
are mistakenly omitted from the rolls, a problem that prevented
thousands of Floridians - including many blacks - from voting in the
disputed 2000 presidential election. At issue in the lawsuit is a state
requirement that voters be in their proper precinct in order for the
provisional ballots to be counted. That restriction has led to hundreds
of provisional ballots cast by otherwise eligible voters being
discarded. A coalition of labor unions and others want the precinct
restriction thrown out. Republicans in Florida (and Ohio) want to keep
the law. [more ]
- ACLU finds 7.3 percent of provisional ballots get tossed. About
7.3 percent of provisional ballots cast in recent Florida elections
were thrown out because voters failed to file them from the correct
precincts, raising more questions about whether every vote will be
counted in the upcoming presidential election, the American Civil
Liberties Union said Tuesday. The finding was based on an ACLU study of
2,151 provisional ballots cast in elections that took place over the
last two years. The survey found that elections officials discarded 156
of those votes because they were cast in the wrong place. Provisional
ballots were introduced after the 2000 presidential election debacle in
Florida to offer people a second chance to vote if their names do not
appear on voter rolls. [more ]
- Groups offer deal to drop ballot suit. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler
and a coalition of unions and civil-rights groups offered Tuesday to
drop their ongoing lawsuits against the state if Florida would give all
voters the choice of using a paper ballot on Nov. 2. Attorneys
representing the Palm Beach County Democrat and the groups made the
offer during an hour-and-a-half meeting with top state election
officials where they presented a lengthy proposal that would also
require a federal court to appoint special masters to oversee voting in
the 15 counties that use touch-screen voting machines. Those counties
include Broward and Miami-Dade. [more ]
- Jesse Jackson warns of legal war after close election [more ]
