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 ]

• 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 ]