Florida: Opponents blast Florida election reform bill | wtsp.com

If you’re planning on getting married and changing your name, or moving to another part of Florida, pay attention. The way you vote may be impacted. An election reform bill that sailed through the House and Senate, despite intense debate, is headed for Governor Scott’s desk.

It aims to change a number of things about Florida’s election code, including a forty-year-old law that allows voters to change their address and/or name at the polls on election day. If signed into law, voters wishing to make those changes will have to vote by provisional ballot, which some fear may not be counted.

Florida: Florida legislature OKs elections-law overhaul | MiamiHerald.com

After dueling allegations that it was either a “protection against voting fraud” or a “disenfranchisement act,” Florida lawmakers on Thursday approved a 157-page overhaul of the state’s elections code.

The House voted 77-38 along party lines to pass the bill (HB 1355); the Senate had voted 25-13 earlier in the day. Paula Dockery of Lakeland and Mike Fasano of New Port Richey were the only Senate Republicans to break ranks and vote against it. The measure now goes to Gov. Rick Scott, who is expected to sign it into law. Among other provisions, the bill reduces early voting time to one week and requires groups that sign up voters to register with the state. 

Editorials: Charles Zelden: Changes in election law remind us of another era | floridatoday.com

Recent events remind us that Florida truly is a Southern state. Legislation that would radically revise Florida’s election laws was passed Thursday by the Senate SB 1355 and now is headed back to the House for likely fast-tracked approval.

These changes include: shrinking the early-voting period by half, from two weeks to one, removing provisions in place since the 1970s that allow registered voters to change their names and addresses in elections records on Election Day and still vote using a regular ballot, allowing poll watchers to challenge the legitimacy of voters, which would automatically require those voters to fill out provisional ballots, which are less likely to be counted than standard ballots, and severely restricting the ability of grass-roots groups to register new voters by enacting new restrictions and fines.

Florida: Bill Nelson Warns Rick Scott to Veto Election Bill or Face a Federal Investigation | Broward Palm Beach News

​US Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)Although it seems like Gov. Rick Scott will make the bold and progressive move of banning bestiality, he still plans to screw voters. The election overhaul bill, which many see as backdoor disenfranchisement, cruised through the Legislature and now awaits the governor’s signature. Throughout the legislative session, Scott not only supported the bill verbally but also led by example as he and his Cabinet brought back Jim Crow-style voting laws.

Well, it’s about time that someone reminded Capo Scott about the Voting Rights Act, which was meant to ensure every citizen’s right to vote by protecting them from states that exploited loopholes in the 15th Amendment. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires federal preclearance of any election law that could discriminate against minority voters. Section 5 covers five counties in Florida.

The NAACP and ACLU have already asked the Justice Department to investigate Florida’s potential violation of the Voting Rights Act. Now, finally, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has done the same.

Nelson railed against the bill all week and barely acknowledged the feckless castigation that followed his remark about Osama Bin Laden’s death. After both chambers of the Legislature approved the bill yesterday, Nelson admonished Scott in a letter in which he threatened to seek a federal investigation if Scott signs the bill into law.

 

 

Full Article: Bill Nelson Warns Rick Scott to Veto Election Bill or Face a Federal Investigation – Broward Palm Beach News – The Juice.

Florida: Florida Senate passes controversial elections bill | Orlando Sentinel

The Florida Senate passed a massive overhaul of state election law by a 25-13 vote Thursday that would make changes to early voting, limit a voter’s ability to change his or her address or name at the polls and set up a presidential primary committee.

Democrats argued against the legislation though and said it would disenfranchise voters, particularly college students who frequently take advantage of the registration changes at the polls because they move so often. “We have young people who would love to register to vote,” said Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Miami.

Florida: Nelson blasts Florida Legislature’s 2012 election-law fixes | MiamiHerald.com

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson blasted state Republican lawmakers Monday for an election law overhaul that he says will block college students and military personnel from having their votes counted next year when he and President Barack Obama both seek re-election.

Then Nelson waded into a controversy of his own when he suggested the U.S. special forces that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden could be blocked from voting if the Legislature passes the bill.

Editorials: Tonyaa Weathersbee: Politics behind GOP’s voting changes | jacksonville.com

If anyone needs a clue as to why the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature is making proposals that puts early voting in its cross hairs, one place to look might be Time magazine’s Oct. 30, 2008 issue.

In it was a piece titled “How Early Voting Could Cost McCain Florida.” It detailed how early-voting Democrats, many of them energized by the candidacy of Barack Obama, were outnumbering Republicans at early voting sites by more than 20 percentage points.

Florida: Proposed bills would make voting harder for many Floridians | Sun Sentinel

College students seeking to vote at their campus precinct will find it harder to do. So will women who’ve changed their name but not re-registered before an election. The time for early voting would be cut from 14 days to six.

Groups like the League of Women Voters will find it tougher to register voters. And citizens attempting to amend the constitution will have to gather more than 600,000 signatures in two years instead of four.

Florida: With presidential election looming, Florida election law rewrite moves forward | jacksonville.com

With a fast-approaching presidential election expected to bring more than 8.5 million Floridians to the polls, the Legislature is battling over sweeping changes to nearly every aspect of state election law.

Supporters tout the changes as fighting fraud. Opponents say they are disenfranchising. And the people charged with counting ballots wonder why lawmakers are trying to reinvent the wheel in the first place.

Florida: Florida GOP Pushes Controversial Changes To Voting Laws | NPR

 

People wait in line at the Boynton Beach Civic Center in Palm Beach County, Fla., for early voting, on Oct. 22, 2008. That year, early voting helped Barack Obama carry the state. Now, Republicans want to shorten the number of days Floridians can vote early.It’s still a year and a half until the presidential election, but members of Florida’s Legislature are already jockeying over who will be able to vote and how.

Republicans — who control both Florida’s House and Senate — are sponsoring bills that would restrict the ability of third-party groups to conduct voter registration drives. Another measure would slash the number of days allotted for early voting.

Democrats and independent voter groups say it’s all about politics.

Florida: Florida House passes elections law overhaul | St. Petersburg Times

The Florida House passed a sweeping overhaul of election laws Thursday that Republicans say will streamline voting machinery and Democrats say will make it harder for people to vote in the nation’s biggest battleground state in 2012.

Passage on a 79-37 party-line vote followed two days of intensely partisan debate — a harbinger of next year’s presidential election when Florida’s newly increased 29 electoral votes and all 160 legislative seats will be at stake in a pivotal reapportionment year. But the closest that any Republican lawmaker came to stating the obvious — invoking President Barack Obama’s name — was a passing reference to preventing “the Chicago method” of voting more than once.

Editorials: Election bills rap democracy: Public short-served by GOP legislation | OrlandoSentinel.com

Time to stop calling the gang running Florida’s government conservative. They’re busy concocting a liberal dose of new regulations that would serve their fortunes first, and Floridians dead last.

It amounts to their ripping apart election laws that have made it easier for Floridians to vote, and replacing them with laws that could stack the deck — election outcomes — in the Republicans’ favor.

Florida: Florida Legislature passes dramatic overhaul of state election law | South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Florida lawmakers passed a dramatic overhaul of state election law Thursday night, a move that GOP legislators say will bring integrity to the process and one that Democrats counter will disenfranchise voters across the state.

The measure, a major rewrite to the laws that govern the state’s elections, passed 79-37. Among other things, the measure (HB 1355) would limit voters’ ability to change their address at the polls, change third-party voter registration rules and make it more difficult for citizen groups to put amendments on the ballot.

Editorials: Howard Troxler: Florida Legislature cracks down on … voting? | St. Petersburg Times

Having solved all other problems, the Florida Legislature now turns to the most dangerous threat of all …Voting. No kidding. The 2011 Legislature is considering, and its committees have approved so far, bills that would:

• Cut Florida’s early-voting period (nearly one out of five ballots were cast early in 2010) from two weeks to one.
• Bar anyone who has moved or changed a name, such as newly married women, from updating their information at the polls on Election Day and receiving a regular ballot. They would have to cast “provisional” ballots instead.
• Crack down on, and expand penalties for, groups that try to register new voters — which used to be considered an all-American activity.
• Make it even harder for citizens to change the Florida Constitution by setting an earlier expiration date for petition signatures.

Florida: Voter-rights activists pan Florida election measure | TBO.com

For more than a decade, lawmakers have been tweaking election rules to improve on Florida’s ham-fisted history of counting ballots. This year, an election law rewrite is moving through the state House that voter-rights activists have assailed as “good old-fashioned voter suppression” and “Jim Crow tactics.”

The legislation was described as a cleanup bill in advance of the 2012 elections that is “important to ensure the integrity of the political process and our elections in Florida,” said sponsor Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Ocala.

Florida: Critics lash Florida elections bill as ‘voter suppression’ | St. Petersburg Times

The latest House makeover of Florida election laws stirred intense controversy Thursday as unions and grass roots political groups complained that it would suppress 2012 voting in a state Barack Obama won in 2008.

By a 12-6 party-line vote, the House State Affairs Committee approved the new bill, setting up a vote by the full House. Similar legislation will be taken up Friday by the Senate Rules Committee.

Florida: Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho: Florida Elections Bill is a Travesty

The House Republican Leadership has introduced a bill that the Leon County Supervisor of Elections calls a travesty. Proposed House Bill 1355 passed through a subcommittee Friday morning. Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho says proposed House Bill 1355 destroys the election process as it currently exists in Florida and he went to legislators to let them know that he strongly opposes it.

Sancho shook his head at the 128-page document before heading inside the House Office Building to let the Governmental Operations Subcommittee know how he feels. But, to no avail. The subcommittee members voted in favor of proposed House Bill 1355. Sancho says he disagrees with a change that would allow the partisan appointee of the governor to control all supervisors of elections and give them orders, or remove them from office. Sancho said, “This is ridiculous. It would be as if an appointed water district commissioner could order an elected legislator around. There’s only one reason for this and that is partisan control over the process. It serves no interest of the citizens.”

Florida: Sweeping Florida elections-law overhaul clears committee | Miami Herald

Over the objections of county elections supervisors and public-interest groups, a bill that would make numerous changes to Florida’s elections law cleared a House subcommittee on Friday. The Government Operations Subcommittee voted up the bill on Friday by a party-line tally of 9-4.

Its sponsor, state Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, said the changes will get the state’s Elections Code in “ship-shape” for the next election cycle and the redrawing of congressional and legislative district lines. “This bill preserves and protects the political process,” Baxley told the subcommittee.

Florida: Groups and Election Officials Warn Department of Justice that Voting Machine Vendor Merger will Inflate Costs to Taxpayers, Threaten Election Accuracy and National Security

Experts propose remedies to prevent U.S. monopoly of Voting Equipment and Election Services

In a letter to Attorney General Holder, election administrators, computer experts and fair election advocates warned that last year’s merger of the largest and second largest voting machine manufacturers has “broad-based detrimental public impact.”  They outlined serious threats to national security and election accuracy. The experts cautioned the merger produces greater capacity for predatory pricing and coercive contractual terms that raise costs to taxpayers and harm other commercial vendors. The letter suggests actions the Department of Justice Antitrust Division should take to correct major market injuries and fortify election and national security.

In September 2009, Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) announced it had purchased Premier Election Solutions, Inc. (formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, Inc.), consolidating over 70% of the U.S. voting system market into one private company.  In December, the Florida Attorney General announced its office was investigating the merger over concerns it constituted anti-competitive behavior that may seriously harm consumers. In their letter, experts cite a record of anti-competitive market practices by ES&S that include contract clauses which prohibit ES&S governmental customers from hiring other vendors to service, program or administer ES&S voting equipment and predatory pricing of goods and services to drive other vendors out of business. They claim taxpayers and election offices have been harmed by Election Eve threats to cut off services if local governments did not accept higher prices for previously contracted Election Day services.