Quote:
Voting rights advocates are alarmed over the Florida Secretary of State's September 8th decision to enforce the state's "no-match, no-vote" law, a voter registration law that previously blocked more than 16,000 eligible Florida citizens from registering to vote, through no fault of their own, and could disenfranchise tens of thousands more voters in November.
Secretary of State Kurt Browning's last-minute decision to implement the law in the final month before the registration deadline will post a significant hurdle to eligible Florida citizens hoping to vote in November. It will disenfranchise voters who do not send or bring a photocopy of their driver's license to county election officials' offices after voting, even though these voters will have shown their driver's licenses when they went to vote at the polls.
"This 11th-hour decision is an ill-advised move to apply a policy the state has never enforced in its current form, at a time when registration activity is at its highest," stated Beverlye Neal, director of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, a plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenges Florida's matching law. "The Secretary's decision will put thousands of real Florida citizens at risk due to bureaucratic typos that under the 'no-match, no-vote' law will prevent them from voting this November," said Alvaro Fernandez of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, another plaintiff in the case.
"Voters who do everything right, who submit forms that are complete, timely, and accurate, will suddenly find themselves unregistered when they go to vote, just because someone somewhere punched the wrong letter on a keyboard," said Myrna Pérez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. "The no match, no vote policy is unjust and unnecessary, and Florida voters will pay the price this fall," stated Jean-Robert Lafortune, president of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, another plaintiff in the lawsuit. Florida Voting Law May Disenfranchise Thousands | Democracy and Elections | AlterNet
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According to the T.V., the law says your ballot must match your drivers license and social security card in address, name and other info.
This might not look like a bad law unless you are someone who has moved a lot-
LIKE ME!!
Truck drivers often see those "greener pastures" while traveling or maybe get a divorce and want a change of the old scenery.
One doesn't think about notifying Social Security unless they have ongoing contact with them (receive a check).
Putting this law into affect this close to the election is just asking for turmoil.
Maybe Florida is afraid Colorado and other battle ground states will steal the lime light the state was shown during the Bush/Gore fiasco?
09-20-2008, 04:58 AM
Florida Voting Law May Disenfranchise Thousands
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