Friday, May 20, 2011

Record Editorial Rightly Condemns Voter Suppression Law Enacted by Florida's Repoublican Governor and Legislature

Our view: Voter sign-up will suffer without League of Women Voters

Summary:

The League of Women Voters on Monday announced its suspension of voter registration efforts unless Gov. Rick Scott vetoes an elections overhaul bill the Florida Legislature approved last week.

The League of Women Voters on Monday announced its suspension of voter registration efforts unless Gov. Rick Scott vetoes an elections overhaul bill the Florida Legislature approved last week.

House Bill 1355, sent to Scott last week by the Legislature, makes it harder for third-party groups, including the respected and nonpartisan League to register people to vote. Suspicions of voter fraud were raised by the bill's supporters to justify the changes. A May 3 story in the St. Petersburg Times about criticism of the bill by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, reported on recent fraud cases. A spokesman for Secretary of State Kurt Browning said that between January 2008 and March 2011 in Florida, 31 cases of alleged voter fraud were referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for investigation. The spokesman said only three resulted in arrests.

The elections proposal is to tighten up voter registration provisions to make it harder for people to vote, in our view. Shortening deadlines for turning in voter registrations to the election office within hours rather than days of registration, and requiring additional documentation about the third-party registrant, has forced the league into a battle with Scott and the Legislature.

While other groups by nature of their names may have a vested interest in getting people out to vote, the League's intention is purely to help people step into democracy, by registering to vote.

League President Deidra Macnab, said in a news release, "the Legislature has declared war on voters."

"While the League remains committed to empower an active and informed citizenry, we cannot and will not place our thousands of volunteers at risk, subjecting them to a process in which one late form could result in their facing financial and civil penalties," Macnab said.

Scott hasn't weighed in on HB 1355 yet but we hope that when he does, he will use it his veto pen.

We also hold out hope that the U.S. Department of Justice will not clear the bill either. The federal agency has to clear any changes in election laws under the Voting Rights Act in several states including Florida where racial discrimination in voter registration was prevalent in the past.

Cutting back early voting from two weeks to one week and making voter registration harder to accomplish reverses the push that elections offices and voter-minded groups have made for decades to get Americans voting.

That's enough reason for the governor to veto the bill. It disenfranchises everyone, not just minority parties.


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