Florida officials revealed yesterday that a total of 7,400 newly registered voters in the state could be prevented from voting on Nov. 4, thanks to an onerous new "no match, no vote" law passed by the Republicans in 2005 but enforced for the first time last month, after surviving legal challenges. Once again, Republicans are succeeding in trying to steal the election here in the Sunshine State.
As the St. Petersburg Times explains today, the onerous "no match, no vote" law requires the driver's license number or last four digits of a Social Security number written on new voter registration applications to exactly match numbers in a government database. The state has now identified 7,400 new voters who apparently have failed this matching test. The discrepancy could be due to something as simple as a person writing down one wrong number from his or her driver's license number on the application. These rejected new voters now must go down to their local elections office to clear up the discrepancies or their votes on Election Day won't count. Anyone who has not done this before Election Day can cast a provisional ballot at the polls, but the ballot will only count if the voter goes back to resolve the discrepancy within two days after the election.
As you can see, the new law puts up several roadblocks to prevent newly registered voters from voting, even if it is due to no fault of their own. The law will clearly harm Democrats more than Republicans in this election, since 360,000 of the state's new voters registered Democrat, compared to 190,000 who registered Republican. Also, the law could disproportionately affect voters who are more inclined to vote for Obama, including young voters and Hispanic voters.
The Times article tells the story of Eckerd College senior Brittany Reynolds, whose voter registration has been rejected by the state.
The 20-year-old art major said she is so busy she could barely glance at the letter she got this week, let alone fax a photocopy of her driver's license to the Pinellas County elections office.
"It's a real bummer," Reynolds said. "I did want to be a part of the election."
The Times also points out that many critics contend that the "no match, not vote" law unfairly targets Hispanic voters because they often use two surnames, which can cause confusion and a mismatch in the state's voter database.
Secretary of State Kurt Browning's decision to start enforcing the law last month has frustrated many local election officials, from both parties, who are already swamped by the record number of new voter registrations and seem unclear about how to implement the law. Browning himself admits that the law may not be applied evenly across the state:
And after Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning issued orders to implement the law, the controversy that has only grown.
The Florida Democratic Party unsuccessfully petitioned Republican Gov. Charlie Crist to suspend the law until after the election.
Now criticism is rising among some county election supervisors, who are elected by local voters. They think Browning, a former Republican elections supervisor in Pasco County, issued orders that don't provide enough latitude to ensure the widest voter participation.
"I think the state has gone way beyond the intent of the law," Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark, a Republican, said Friday in a tense conference call with Browning...
"I have concerns about uniformity," Browning said Friday.
We can expect this to become a big issue on Election Day in Florida. About the only thing we can do now is to help get the word out to all new Florida voters that if their registration gets rejected because of the "no match, no vote" law they CAN still vote. They just need to clear up the discrepancy with their local elections office. And it would be best to take care of it BEFORE election day, so that they don't have to complete a provisional ballot. And it's entirely possible that some poll workers may tell them they can't vote and not give them the option to use a provisional ballot, out of either malice or ignorance of the new law, so voters also need to know that they have the legal right to complete a provisional ballot.
Let's not let the Republicans steal Florida's votes like they did in 2000. 7,400 voters may not sound like a lot in a state as large as Florida, but remember that in 2000 the election came down to a much, much smaller number than that in the state.