The League of Women Voters of Florida on Thursday expressed their outrage on a new version of a 151-page Republican-drafted elections bill, HB 1355, which surfaced late last night, saying it makes a bad bill much worse.
Although the League and other voter groups are still digesting the revised version, HB 1355 stands to disenfranchise Florida’s mobile citizens, including college students and re-locating professionals, by increasing regulations and obstacles for voters, including disallowing address changes at the polls.
The bill the League said, also compromises and likely eliminates third-party efforts to register voters, as well as, vastly increases the number of provisional ballots used–ballots which are often uncounted due to the amount of time and effort needed to verify each one. When taken as a whole, HB 1355 unduly burdens Supervisors of Elections and third-party voter registration groups and assumes that voters are “guilty until proven innocent.”
“Despite Florida’s well-executed 2008 and 2010 general elections, the legislature is reverting to Jim Crow-style tactics of disenfranchising voters at the polls and suppressing voter registration efforts via bureaucracy and fines,” a statement from the League said. Given that a number of these provisions have already been overturned by the courts, League President Deirdre Macnab said that “citizens should be outraged over this waste of taxpayer money that will diminish voter registration and voter turnout in our state.”
The League said that a new provision added in the revised bill last night now require voters whose legitimacy is challenged by poll watchers, to cast provisional ballots with no opportunity at the polls to defend themselves and cast a regular ballot. The League added that, provisional ballots are often not counted and besides are expensive and time-consuming.
Another area of concern in the draft bill the League said, is the inability of voters to update their address at polling places on election day and still cast a regular ballot. Should the new bill pass, such voters would have to cast a provisional ballot, which the League says creates more work for election supervisors, cost taxpayers more money and results in a greater chance their provisional ballot will never be counted.
HB 1355 also targets third-party voter registration groups, such as the League. Volunteers are now required to register at their local Supervisors’ offices, provide detailed personal information, take an oath and be held personally and financially liable if they do not deliver the completed forms back to the Supervisor within 48 hours. Fines will be levied up to $1,000 per person.
“How can we ask volunteers to take on a financial risk of $1,000 and their good name if they are late in returning registration forms?” Macnab said. “With this proposed law, Florida’s leaders have taken aim at voters and the legions of volunteers who have over the past 91 years volunteered their time to register new voters, in the belief that active and informed citizens strengthen our democracy. This law brings back Jim Crow-style tactics to intimidate all Florida voters and volunteers who believe in the democratic process.”
