Florida: State defends early voting limits in federal court | MiamiHerald.com

A federal judge on Wednesday questioned the decision by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature to limit the number of early voting days heading into this year’s crucial presidential election. Judge Timothy Corrigan, an appointee of President George W. Bush, held a three-hour hearing in a Jacksonville courtroom on whether he should block the 2011 law that cut the number of days from 14 to eight. The court battle comes just weeks before voting is scheduled to start in the key swing state and is one among a series of legal battles dealing with Florida voting procedures. U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., as well as the Duval County Democratic Party and a civil rights group, filed a lawsuit this summer that challenges the law. Their lawsuit contends that the move was discriminatory because blacks voted early in higher percentages, especially during the 2008 election in which President Barack Obama carried Florida.

Florida: State Loses Bid to Toss Suit Challenging Voter Purge | Bloomberg

Florida Governor Rick Scott lost a federal court bid to throw out a challenge to his initiative to purge non-citizens from voter registration rolls ahead of the Nov. 6 presidential election. U.S. District Judge James Whittemore in Tampa today ruled Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and two state residents may proceed with a complaint alleging the program requires pre- clearance under the Voting Rights Act. Florida is one of 16 jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations that, under the act, must obtain pre-approval of some laws by either the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges.

Florida: Thosands of notices urging voters to vote absentee are mailed out to voters in Duval County | firstcoastnews.com

The ballot is so long and complicated that Duval County elections officials are urging people to request an absentee ballot to avoid a two- to three-hour wait at the polls. The city is mailing out absentee ballot requests to more than 200,000 voting households. You can tear it off, fill it out, with up to two voter requests for absentee ballots per form. Then tape it and mail it. Postage is prepaid. The mailing is costing the elections office more than $21,000, but it will make the election more controllable, according to Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland. First Coast News decided to find out how long it would take to fill out the ballot.

Florida: Groups race against time to get Florida voters registered | NBC News

Voting-rights groups that virtually stopped registering voters in Florida for a year as they challenged the state’s new restrictions on elections now are scrambling to get people there registered for the November 6 election. The effort in Florida – a large, politically divided state that is crucial in the nationwide race between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney – comes two weeks after a federal judge rejected strict limits on voter-registration drives that have led to a big drop in Floridians signing up to vote. The Florida law was so limiting that groups such as Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters, which have helped to register millions of voters in the last two presidential elections, essentially halted their registration drives in the state. Now, with the restrictions lifted and Florida’s October 9 deadline for registering to vote in the November election looming, such groups are fanning out across the state to find new voters.

Florida: Early voting: Why Justice dropped its challenge of Florida plan | CSMonitor.com

Florida has received a green light to implement its new early voting schedule for the November presidential election, including a Republican-backed plan that eliminates early voting on the Sunday before Election Day. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division agreed to end its challenge to the new early voting scheme in Florida, considered a critical battleground in the upcoming election. The department notified state officials late Wednesday that it would approve the state’s plan for early voting, provided election supervisors in five designated counties agree to offer 96 hours of early voting over an 8-day period.  “The Attorney General does not interpose any objections to the specified changes,” the letter says in part.

Florida: Court Approves Early Voting Schedule in Florida | NYTimes.com

The Department of Justice has approved Florida’s early voting schedule for the five counties in the state protected by a civil rights-era law, all but clearing the last significant conflict in the path of November balloting. In a motion filed on Wednesday before the United States District Court in Washington, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department did not oppose Florida’s new plan for those five counties, under one condition: The counties must offer 96 hours of voting between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. over eight days, the maximum under the law. The Justice Department sued the state over its new early voting schedule, which would have reduced the number of days for early voting. With both sides agreeing to the terms, the court is expected to dismiss the suit. But a separate lawsuit filed by Representative Corrinne Brown, a Florida Democrat, over the state’s early voting law is pending, which could still affect the new schedule.

Florida: State Agrees to Let Citizens Mistakenly Purged From Rolls to Vote | NYTimes.com

In a partial victory for voter rights and immigrant groups, Florida residents who were mistakenly removed from the voter rolls this year because the state classified them as noncitizens will be returned to the rolls and allowed to vote in November. The Florida Department of State, which initiated the review of noncitizens on the voter rolls, also agreed Wednesday to inform the 2,625 people on the list who are eligible to vote that their voting rights had been fully restored. Still unresolved is whether Florida broke a federal law preventing voter purges within 90 days of an election. The agreement stems from a lawsuit brought by several groups that said the so-called voter purge was discriminatory because it singled out mostly immigrants. “There will be no purging before the election,” said Katherine Culliton-González, director of voter protection for the Advancement Project, one of the civil rights groups that sued the state. “American citizens won’t be purged, and naturalized citizens won’t be purged. For us, it’s a great victory.”

Florida: Voter Roll screening yields few non-citizens | KEYC

Florida’s attempt to screen voter rolls for non-U.S. citizens is yielding a smaller number than state officials had anticipated. The Florida Department of State announced Wednesday that it used a federal immigration database to verify 207 voters are not citizens. Earlier this year, state officials under Republican Gov. Rick Scott had said they suspected more than 2,600 voters were ineligible and had asked election supervisors to purge those on the list. State officials, however, said the screening process was still a success because it yielded some ineligible voters. Florida’s announcement came the same day that it reached an agreement with voting groups that had challenged the purge, alleging it was discriminatory because they said it mostly targeted Hispanics. The groups that work with immigrants, Haitian-Americans and Puerto Ricans had filed suit in Miami and they are dropping most of their claims “This settlement represents a historic milestone for voting rights in Florida,” said Advancement Project Co-Director Judith Browne Dianis. “It will ensure that naturalized citizens, the majority of whom are Latino, black and Asian, have the same opportunities as all Americans to participate in our political process and exercise the most fundamental right in our democracy – the right to vote.”

Florida: Clay County Republicans, other GOP groups, oppose Corrine Brown’s early voting lawsuit | jacksonville.com

Arguing that their political operations would be hampered, three county Republican Parties — including the Clay County GOP — have joined a legal fight over newly minted early voting hours. The lawsuit was filed by, among others, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat. It challenges 2011 legislation that cut early voting days from a maximum of 14 to eight and decreased the required number of early voting hours from 96 to 48. Under the legislation, election officials have the option to keep early voting open for 96 hours, but it’s not required. Brown’s lawsuit asks the Florida Secretary of State and Duval County Supervisor of Elections to use the state’s old early voting schedule. She says the new law impacts minority voters because they use early voting in large numbers, especially on the Sunday before the election. In a motion accepted Monday by Jacksonville federal Judge Timothy Corrigan, the Republican Parties of Broward, Clay and Sarasota counties said their interests are not represented by the defendants and they want to join the lawsuit.

Florida: Voters facing a long, long ballot in November | Tampa Bay Times

Brace yourselves, Florida voters: The election ballot you’ll see this fall is longer than ever. It’s so long that voters will have to fill out multiple sheets with races on both sides, then feed those multiple pages through ballot scanners, one page at a time. It’s a pocketbook issue, too: Some people who vote by mail will have to dig deeper and pay at least 65 cents postage and up to $1.50 to return their multipage ballots in heavier envelopes. More than ever, county election supervisors say, people should vote early or request an absentee ballot to avoid predicted bottlenecks at the polls on Election Day. “This is the longest ballot I can remember,” said Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark. “The voter who sees this ballot the first time may need smelling salts.”

Colorado: Voter Purges Net Few Noncitizens, So Far | Minnesota Public Radio News

States using a federal immigration database to purge noncitizens from voter lists are starting to get results, which so far include few illegal voters. In Florida, which was first to gain access to the database after fighting the federal government in court, an initial run of roughly 2,600 names has turned up “several” violators, according to a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner. “We are seeing that there are definitely noncitizens on the voter rolls, but we’re still very early in this review process,” says Chris Cate. A much larger list of suspected noncitizens soon will be fed through the database, Cate says. The list will be an updated version culled from cross-checking voter rolls and driver’s license data, a method that produced about 180,000 names last year. Colorado, which along with Florida was initially denied access to the database, says that an automated check of more than 1,400 names has flagged 177 people as possible noncitizens. Colorado has asked the Department of Homeland Security, which maintains the database, to assign a person to verify their status. “For the moment, we have no confirmed noncitizens, but I would expect that most of those people would come back as noncitizens,” says Andrew Cole, a spokesman for Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler.

Florida: Justice Department OKs Florida early voting plan for 5 counties | www.wdbo.com

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder agreed Wednesday to accept Florida’s revised early-voting plan for five counties covered by the federal Voting Rights Act. Holder filed his response with a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. Last month, the panel ruled that a new Florida election law that reduced early voting to 8 days from as many as 14 violated the federal law in the designated counties because they could discourage minority voting. The judges, though, indicated they’d approve a plan that still provided 96 hours of early voting – the same as under Florida’s previous law. The state plan submitted by Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s administration meets that criteria with eight 12-hour days including 12 on a Sunday that weren’t previously offered.

Florida: Lawmaker’s suit alleges absentee-ballot fraud at North Miami assisted living facilities, nursing homes | MiamiHerald.com

Charges of absentee-ballot fraud at assisted-living facilities and nursing homes are at the center of Rep. John Patrick Julien’s legal challenge to the results of the District 107 primary race for the Florida House. Julien, D-North Miami, who lost a razor-thin Democratic primary to Miami Gardens Rep. Barbara Watson last month, filed a court complaint Tuesday challenging the results of the race. After a recount, Watson won with 50.06 percent of the vote — a 13-vote edge. The court complaint, filed in Leon County, alleges that several absentee ballots tied to a North Miami nursing home may have been cast fraudulently. It highlights a political consultant who advertised herself as “The Queen of Absentee Ballots” and a woman who appeared on Haitian Creole radio, warning absentee voters to consult with “teacher Carline” before filling out their ballots. “We have meticulously researched the facts in this case and have very good evidence that the fraud in the District 107 is concentrated in ALFs and nursing homes,” said Juan-Carlos Planas, an attorney for Julien and a former Republican legislator.

Florida: Brevard County FL Clerk’s campaign aide seeks recount, suspects hacking | floridatoday.com

Sean Campbell, the chief deputy to Clerk of Courts Mitch Needelman, said he has suspicions about the results of the primary election last week that ousted his boss and want the Supervisor of Elections Office to check into it. Former Clerk Scott Ellis won that election, getting 61 percent of the vote to Needelman’s 39 percent. Campbell said he fears that the vote-counting system may have been hacked, either from within the Supervisor of Elections Office or from the outside, and the results reported were not the actual vote totals. He wants election officials to hand-count ballots from three randomly selected precincts to double-check the accuracy of the reported totals. “I’m not accusing anybody,” Campbell said. “I’m just concerned. If the results are what they are, well, OK.”

Florida: Over objections, Florida asks court to approve early voting plan | MiamiHerald.com

Florida is asking a federal court to approve eight 12-hour days of early voting in five counties, saying it would not harm African-American voters. Gov. Rick Scott’s administration filed papers with U.S. District Court in Washington, saying that 96 hours of early voting, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for eight days, including a Sunday, would comply with the Voting Rights Act. Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee and Hendry counties agreed in writing to hold eight 12-hour days of early voting in an effort to win statewide approval of the new schedule from a panel of three federal judges. Those four counties and Monroe, in the Florida Keys, cannot implement changes to voting without federal approval so that minority voters are protected from discrimination. The state acted despite Monroe County’s refusal to join the other four counties in the state’s request. Monroe wants 12 days of early voting for eight hours each day, saying that is better for Keys voters.

Florida: Election official pushes back against early-voting change | Reuters

A fight over early voting in Florida deepened on Wednesday as an election official who will oversee voting in the Florida Keys in November’s presidential election refused to reduce the number of early-voting days despite a warning from the state’s governor. Harry Sawyer, the supervisor of elections in Monroe County, which includes the Keys, told Reuters he plans to allow 12 days of voting ahead of the election even though a 2011 Florida law cut the number to eight. Florida is among a handful of states that could determine the outcome of the race between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The issue of early-voting restrictions has also played out in Ohio, another prized swing state, where the Obama campaign filed a lawsuit to legally challenge moves by state officials to reduce the number of early-voting days. Democrats claim early voting restrictions are designed to limit Democratic voter turnout, particularly among working-class voters, who are more likely to work jobs with less flexibility to take time off to vote. Republicans argue the measures are intended to reduce voter fraud.

Florida: Scott appears to threaten Monroe County supervisor of elections | The News-Press

Gov. Rick Scott issued a statement Tuesday that some read as a veiled threat to the Monroe County supervisor of elections, escalating a conflict over early-voting days in the run-up to the November elections. Harry Sawyer, the Republican supervisor in Monroe, said Monday he didn’t support an effort by Secretary of State Ken Detzner to get federal approval for Monroe and four other counties to reduce the number of early-voting days from as many as 14 to eight. Because of a history of racial or language discrimination, those counties must get “preclearance” from the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal court for any changes to voting policies. The Legislature in 2011 passed a law that included reducing the number of early-voting days statewide, but a three-judge federal court last week rejected that change in the preclearance counties. The panel, however, said it could likely approve a reduction in the number of voting days if all five counties agreed to keep offices open for 12 hours on each of the eight days, which would maintain the same number of hours for voting.

Florida: Campaign vendors say Republican Congressman David Rivera funded Democrat’s failed primary bid | MiamiHerald.com

Fueled with $43,000 in secret money, Republican Rep. David Rivera helped run a shadow campaign that might have broken federal laws in last week’s Democratic primary against his political nemesis Joe Garcia, according to campaign sources and finance records. As part of the effort, a political unknown named Justin Lamar Sternad campaigned against Garcia by running a sophisticated mail campaign that Rivera helped orchestrate and fund, campaign vendors said. Among the revelations: The mailers were often paid in envelopes stuffed with crisp hundred-dollar bills. Rivera and Sternad have denied working together in his campaign, which ended Aug. 14. But Hugh Cochran, president of Campaign Data, told The Herald this week that Rivera contacted him in July and requested he create a list of voters who were ultimately targeted in the 11 mailers sent by Sternad’s campaign. “David hired me to run the data,” said Cochran, who is a retired FBI agent.

Florida: Keeping track of Florida early voting challenges | www.wokv.com

State lawmakers are now pressuring Florida Governor Rick Scott to extend the number of early voting days offered after a federal court ruled the new law could not take effect in some counties. The current law cuts the number of early voting days offered by the state and includes a few other regulations.  A federal court ruled last week that the reduction could not be enforced in five Florida counties covered by the Voting Rights Act because it would directly impact the ability of minorities to vote.  Because the state wants one unified election plan which covers all of Florida’s 67 counties, officials are now working with the elections office in those counties to bridge the gap.

Florida: Rick Scott, Democrats fight over Florida early voting | MiamiHerald.com

The fight over early voting is escalating in Florida as Gov. Rick Scott seeks agreement among counties for eight days and Democrats demand 12 days. At issue is whether all 67 counties will operate under one early voting schedule, or five counties — including Monroe — will offer more days than all the others. Days after a federal court ruled that eight days of early voting could depress African-American turnout, Scott’s chief elections advisor tried to get five counties to agree to eight days of early voting anyway — for 12 hours a day. Court approval is critical. Because of past evidence of discrimination, election law changes need clearance from the federal government or federal courts before they taking effect in Monroe, Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee and Hendry counties. Because the judges rejected the shorter early voting schedule in those counties last week, the counties must provide up to 14 days of early voting under the old law.

Florida: As always, Florida in the middle of the voting wars | The Washington Post

Stick a pin almost anywhere on a map of Florida and you’ll find a legal battle over who will be eligible to vote in the coming presidential election — and when, and how, and where. In a state crucial to Mitt Romney’s battle to replace President Obama, a law passed in 2011 by the Republican legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) has created an awesome wake of litigation. The law imposes more than 75 changes, including restrictions on who can register voters and limits on the time allowed for early voting. Sponsors of the measure said it creates a more reliable system that combats voter fraud, while opponents, a group that included every Democratic lawmaker, called it a partisan ploy to suppress voters who traditionally favor Democrats. But unlike the frenzied trip to the U.S. Supreme Court that followed the close of voting in the 2000 presidential race, the Sunshine State’s legal battles are being waged in advance of the November vote.

Florida: Scott must figure out what to do with early voting | StAugustine.com

Twelve years after Florida decided the 2000 presidential election, one of the nation’s biggest swing states is confronting a legal and political quandary over its voting standards. A federal court in Washington D.C., ruled late Thursday that new restrictions on early voting passed by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature cannot take effect in five counties covered by federal voting laws. The ruling — which said the changes could hurt participation by blacks — raises the prospect of having longer early-voting periods in places such Tampa than in urban areas such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. Some voting groups — and Democratic politicians — called on Republican Gov. Rick Scott to immediately force all counties to impose the same time period for early voting. The law passed last year kept the maximum total hours of early voting hours the same, but it reduced the days in which early voting was available. The Scott administration on Friday was still reviewing the 119-page ruling.

Florida: Hans von Spakovsky Helped Rick Scott’s Office With Voter Purge Media Push | TPM

Hans von Spakovsky, the controversial Bush administration official who writes in support of restrictive voting laws, worked with the office of Gov. Rick Scott on the rollout of Florida’s voting list purge, according to documents shared with TPM. Emails show that Scott’s communications staff planned to offer von Spakovsky up to local radio station as an expert on Florida’s effort to purge their voting lists back in June. While the purge targeted non-citizens, the state was using faulty data that included numerous legitimate voters.

Florida: Federal Court Rejects Florida Early Voting Changes | ABC News

A federal court says a Florida law that restricts the number of early-voting days could result in a dramatic reduction in participation by blacks. The Republican-controlled Florida legislature last year cut the number of early-voting days to 8 from 12. But the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled late Thursday that because of the law’s potential impact on minority voters, it would not allow Florida to put the changes in place in five Florida counties covered by federal voting laws.

Florida: Cause of Pinellas County voting glitch still a mystery | Tampa Bay Times

Pinellas County officials still don’t know exactly what went wrong with the county’s election system during Tuesday’s primary. Minutes after the polls closed, election workers found themselves unable to electronically transmit the vote tallies to the main office in Largo. Instead, they drove the memory sticks to election headquarters, delaying publication of the final results by about 90 minutes. The problem, county officials said, came from the phone lines leading into the server. But on Wednesday they could not say what might have caused the phone lines to fail, or how quickly county technicians would be able to repair them. Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark on Tuesday promised that the system would be up and running in time for the Nov. 6 general election. “They’ll just have to look and see where the problem came from and they’ve assured us they’ll work to take care of it as soon as possible,” said spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock.

Florida: Once Again Florida at Center of Debate Over Voting Rules | News21

Florida’s hanging chads and butterfly ballots in 2000 ignited the divisive battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court denying an election recount, effectively declaring that George W. Bush won the presidential election by 537 votes. Another potentially close election is ahead, and the nation’s largest swing state is again at the center of a partisan debate over voting rules — this time, a fight about the removal of non-citizens from Florida’s voter roll and how the state oversees groups who register voters. It is set against a national backdrop of a bitter fight between Democrats who say voting rights of students and minorities are endangered and Republicans who say that voter fraud is widespread enough to sway an election. While many other states have considered laws that would require that people show a photo ID before they can vote, Florida has taken a different tack. Republicans there wrote a law in 2011 that they said would eliminate voter registration fraud by more closely controlling third-party registration, early voting hours and voter address updates. “With the old law, some things weren’t illegal or designated as fraud,” said Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican and funeral home owner who sponsored the bill.

Florida: Secretary of State Detzner says Florida voter purge to resume soon | RealClearPolitics

The state’s top election official said Tuesday that he expects Florida’s efforts to purge non-citizens from voter registration rolls to soon resume and be completed before the Nov. 6 general election. Florida is on the verge of getting access to an immigration database from the federal Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of State Ken Detzner said shortly after polls opened for the state’s primary election. Republican Gov. Rick Scott began the push to rid Florida’s voting rolls of illegally registered non-citizens, but Homeland Security initially declined to help. Federal officials, however, said they’d make the database available after a federal judge refused to halt the purge, but both sides are still working on the details of a final agreement. “We are making some progress, just recently, the last few days in actually getting access to the database,” Detzner said.

Florida: State releases obsolete list of possible noncitizen voters | Miami Herald

It took weeks and weeks, but the state of Florida on Thursday finally released a list of 180,506 voters whose citizenship is in question, based on a cross-check of a database of Florida drivers. But state officials called the list “obsolete” and said they would not use it to “purge” anyone from the right to vote this fall — leaving open the possibility that some noncitizens could cast ballots. The list includes voters’ names, dates of birth, and their nine-digit voter ID numbers. Information on voters’ race, party affiliation home address was not included, and the state said that data was not part of the information the state used to create the list. An initial review by the Times/Herald showed that people with Hispanic surnames have a strong presence on the list, including 4,969 people with the first name of Jose; 2,832 named Rodriguez; 1,958 named Perez and 1,915 named Hernandez.

Florida: Election law challenge gets hearing | Miami Herald

A lawyer for Gov. Rick Scott’s administration on Friday said Florida won’t stop using two conflicting election laws, depending on the county, even if opponents of the dual system win an administrative law challenge. Two nonpartisan groups and a Democratic state senator contend the state violated rule-making requirements by directing local election officials in 62 counties to follow a new law even though the other five, all covered by the federal Voting Rights Act, have to adhere to an old one. They also argue the dual system violates another state law requiring a uniform election system but acknowledged it’ll probably take further litigation to require that all 67 counties stick with the old law until a federal court in Washington, D.C., decides if the new statute complies with the Voting Rights Act. “This would be the first step,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, after an administrative law hearing. “If we win here, in order to secure uniform elections in Florida we might have to go to another court.”