Floridia's onerous new "no match, no vote law" has now ensnared 12,165 newly registered Florida voters who may be denied the right to vote, the St. Petersburg Times reports today, and the list is comprised predominantly of minority voters, Dems and voters in Dem-leaning areas. When you consider that when the 2000 Florida election debacle all started with a difference of a few hundred votes, this is significant. This is obviously outrageous, and I'll explain things more below. But there are ways you can help ensure that every Florida voter actually gets to vote this year.
Florida's Secretary of State released its latest list of rejected Florida voters yesterday, and the tally is now 12,165, which is up from 8,867 on an earlier list released Oct. 16. These residents' new voter registrations have been rejected by the state because of discrepancies between information in their voter registration forms and information in government databases of driver licenses or Social Security numbers.
As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, many states have initiated these types of matching systems as a way to suppress voter turnout, thanks to a provision in the deeply flawed Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed by Congress in 2002. As Kennedy explains it:
Spurred by HAVA, almost every state must now attempt to make some kind of match — and four states, including the swing states of Iowa and Florida, require what is known as a "perfect match." Under this rigid framework, new registrants can lose the right to vote if the information on their voter-registration forms — Social Security number, street address and precisely spelled name, right down to a hyphen — fails to exactly match data listed in other government records.
That perfect-match law was passed, of course, by Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature. Most disturbingly, the list of rejected Florida voters is disproportionately made up of African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats and residents of Dem-strong South Florida. African-Americans and Hispanics combined account for 55% of people on the list, which includes 6,194 Democrats and 1,440 Republicans. Many students are also on the list, according to observers.
What can we do to fight back at this late stage in the game? Well, there are several action items I can suggest:
- If you know anyone in Florida who registered to vote this year, check the list of rejected voter registrations to see if their name is on the list. Updated suggestion from pixxer: If you are one of those wonderful souls who has volunteered to register voters in Florida, you might want to check the list for the names of any people you registered whose names you might remember.
- If a person's name is on the list, they need to contact their County Supervisor of Elections Office to determine the problem and rectify it immediately. (You'll find a list of Florida's election offices here). Sometimes the problem is as simple as a misplaced number written down on the form, a missing middle initial, or an error in one of the government databases (imagine that!). Voters need to show the elections office proof of the correct information, preferably a driver's license or a state-issued ID or Social Security card. Often the problem can be resolved via phone or fax.
- If a person is on this list and resolves the problem before Election Day, I would encourage that person to vote early if at all possible, and not wait until Nov. 4, just to make sure there are no lingering problems. Here's a list of Florida's early voting sites.
Any voter on the "no match" list who does not resolve the discrepancy by election day will be forced to fill out a provisional ballot, and will then have two days after the election to resolve the problem with the elections office. Otherwise, their vote will not count this year.
Please spread this information to anyone you know in Florida, particularly anyone who registered to vote this year. Let's fight hard to ensure that 2008 is NOT a repeat of 2000 in Florida.
UPDATE:
Florida4Obama reports seeing a rejected voter resolve a problem on site. I wasn't sure if this was possible. So, please spread the word that if a voter goes to vote and is rejected, they should fight to resolve the problem right there rather than complete a provisional ballot. This would be easier to do at an early voting site rather than waiting for election day. On Rachel Maddow's show last week, Robert F. Kennedy urged voters to use a provisional ballot only as a last, desperate measure.