The 2011 Florida Legislative session is ending with a bang.
Today the Florida state Legislature passed a sweeping new elections law that will place limitations on early voting and will erase a stipulation that allows voters to change their address or name at the polls.
When it comes to voting, Florida sure knows how to pull the okie doke don’t they? Remember the hanging chads controversy back in the day?
Today the bill came up for a vote and it sailed through the House along party lines, 77-13. In the Senate it was the same story, 25-13.
Representative Scott Randolph, D – Orlando, said that the bill will only add confusion to the voting process.
“It will be more confusing for voters to update their voter registration and significantly increase the number of people forced to vote provisional ballots–many, if not most, that will never be counted,” said Randolph.
Hearing that votes may not be counted is a pretty heavy indictment on how the voting process may go moving forward. In 2008 many states, including Florida, had reports of long lines where voters waited for hours on end just to cast a ballot.
Randolph went on to state that third party organizations, like the NAACP, will experience greater difficulty in trying to register voters.
The new elections bill requires groups to register with the state and turn in voter registrations forms within 48 hours of collecting or face a $1,000 fine for failing to turn in the forms.
While Republicans claim that this new bill will help to stamp out voter fraud, the Florida Department of State debunks that notion. According to the DOS there were only 31 cases of voter fraud within the past 3 years, instead of the raging cases of voter deception that the state GOP claims.
But it may be more than voter fraud that Republicans are invoking. State Senator Mike Bennett, R–Bradenton, states that voting shouldn’t be an easy process.
“”I want people to have to walk across towns to vote; in Africa some walk 200 miles. I want them to fight for it. Why would we make this any easier? This should not be easy. There are people who don’t even know when Election Day is, so why should they be voting?” asked the Senate’s President Pro Tempore.
So I guess money Mike wants to bring back the poll tax? He wants to make it harder for people to vote so why don’t we make them count the grains of salt in the salt shaker.
Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?
If Republicans are attempting to disenfranchise voters with this new bill, then sending Senator Mike Bennett out to kind of Bull Conner this thing was genius.
The 60-day state Legislative session ends on May 6th.
