ACLU files suit to include late absentee ballots in Florida
Thursday, November 4, 2004 at 03:54PM
TheSpook
Thousands did not get their Absentee ballots until Monday & Tuesday -- Missing the Vote Deadline
Absentee ballots mailed by Florida elections supervisors too
late for possibly thousands of voters to return them on time should
still count, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a federal
lawsuit filed Tuesday. The suit, filed against Secretary of State
Glenda Hood and elections supervisors in Miami-Dade and Broward
counties, asks that completed absentee ballots mailed in the United
States that arrive at county offices before Nov. 12 be counted. State
law required those ballots to reach county offices by Tuesday night.
The Nov. 12 deadline would be the same standard applied to absentee
ballots filed by voters who are out of the country. "These are not
people who filed their request for an absentee ballot late," said
Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. "These are
people who filed it well in advance of the deadline and some of them
just got their absentee ballot (Tuesday) -- effectively preventing them
from participating in today's election." Broward County officials
dropped off more than 2,500 absentee ballots to a U.S. Postal Service
distribution center Saturday afternoon, meaning they could not be
delivered to residents -- some of whom said they requested the ballots
more than a month ago -- before Monday. [more] and [more]
Ohioans who didn't get absentee ballots Allowed to vote provisional [more]