Word: voter
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...Florida, where just 537 votes determined the victory for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, officials remain especially conscious of an effort to make sure everyone eligible can vote, just not at the expense of potential voter fraud. Those two competing interests are at issue in a federal voter registration lawsuit argued this week, and expected to be decided next week, in Gainesville, which could affect whether tens of thousands of citizens who reside in the state will have their vote count in upcoming elections...
...case concerns a Florida statute that went into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, which requires election officials to match information provided on voter registration applications - such as name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, and driver's license number - against data in official records before an individual can be registered to vote. The problem is that even a simple error such as a typo can keep a legitimate voter off the registration rolls. Compounding that issue is the state's large number of citizens with Haitian or Hispanic names that are either hyphenated or use multiple surnames. Opponents...
...could be the number, it could be the name was improperly typed in," says senior counsel Elizabeth Westfall with the Advancement Project, a civil rights group that, along with several other lawyers, represents the plaintiffs - Florida's NAACP, the Southwest Voter Registration Project, and the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition. They are suing Florida Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning, who oversees elections in the state, arguing that the law is unconstitutional and should be immediately suspended. U.S. District Judge Stephen P. Mickle in Gainesville heard roughly four hours of oral arguments in the case on Tuesday...
...Last year, a federal court in Washington State threw out a "no match, no vote" law. Since then several states, including California, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, have voluntarily dropped similar policies. The current case is one of many controversial voter identification lawsuits being heard in courts around the country. The most notable, concerning an Indiana law, is slated to be heard by the Supreme Court early next year...
...counsel for the Florida Department of State. "It wouldn't make sense to go to all that trouble that even if they don't match we're going to go ahead and register them anyway," she says. Hearn also points out that since Jan. 1, 2006, some 1.5 million voters have been registered in Florida. While conceding that 14,000 other applicants have yet to get on the voter rolls, Hearn maintains that her main concern pertains to the potential for fraud with absentee ballots. "Our concerns lie not in the in-person voting but in the absentee voting where...