Florida: Judge rules against Florida Democrats on extending voter registration | Tampa Bay Times

A federal judge has rejected a request from the Florida Democratic Party to force the state to extend a voter-registration deadline because of Hurricane Michael. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle turned down the party’s request for a temporary restraining order to extend the registration deadline to Oct. 16, a week later than the original Tuesday deadline. The party contended an extension was needed because the hurricane, which devastated parts of the Panhandle on Wednesday, could prevent people from registering to vote in the Nov. 6 election. Secretary of State Ken Detzner this week issued a directive authorizing county elections supervisors whose offices were closed Tuesday to accept paper registration applications on the day that their offices reopen. Detzner did not extend a Tuesday night deadline for voters to register online.

Florida: ‘A mess’: Florida’s online voter-registration system panned | Politico

As a hurricane threatened Florida, Gov. Rick Scott balked at extending Tuesday’s voter registration deadline for a week as Democrats want, in part because the state has an online system to sign up new voters. But thousands of Floridians have told some elections supervisors in recent days that the system isn’t working — despite claims from the state that the problems had been fixed and that the effort has been “immensely successful.” “A mess!” Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher told POLITICO by email. Florida Democrats are suing Scott’s secretary of state, Ken Detzner, in federal court to extend Florida’s voter registration deadline, which is Tuesday, for at least a week due to the approach of Hurricane Michael.

Florida: Democrats Sue to Extend Voter Registration Deadline | Associated Press

A partisan brushfire blew up Tuesday over voter registration deadlines in the battleground state of Florida after Hurricane Michael’s approach disrupted registration in the state’s Panhandle region. The Florida Democratic Party sued in federal court, asking a judge to extend the state’s registration deadline by at least a week. Florida’s deadline to register to vote is Tuesday, 29 days ahead of the Nov. 6 election. Democrats including Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who is running for governor against Republican Ron DeSantis, called for an extension as Michael’s imminent arrival prompted evacuations and the closing of government offices across the Panhandle.

Florida: With hours left to register to vote in Florida, complaints are mounting over glitches | Miami Herald

That huge swirling menace in the Gulf known as Hurricane Michael has the attention of Floridians four weeks before Nov. 6, Election Day. But a disturbance of another kind is intensifying, and it involves voting. Two controversies erupted at once Tuesday, one over a state online voter registration system and the other involving the storm’s disruption of the last day that Florida residents could become eligible voters in 2018. Complaints multiplied from people who say the state’s online registration portal was not working. The portal, which was a year old on Oct. 1, has had glitches before but never this close to a voter registration deadline, and it prompted threats of legal action.

Florida: Florida Wrestles with Election Cybersecurity | American Prospect

Ever since the infamous election of 2000, Florida has been ground zero in the struggle to improve the technology and security of voting. Unfortunately, those critical issues have been conflated with deliberate political efforts to suppress voting and undermine confidence in voting systems, and 2018 is no exception. The reforms instituted since the 2000 debacle, such as early voting, served to make voting more convenient and restored confidence that all votes would be counted accurately. Even Republican Governor Rick Scott, no fan of convenience or expanding the franchise, finally went along with online voter registration last year. Thanks to the work of county election officials and civic reform groups, as well as good-faith efforts by Scott’s Republican predecessor, Charlie Crist, Florida had already made significant strides on election administration and had extended voting rights to certain disenfranchised former felons as well.

Florida: Inside the Unlikely Movement That Could Restore Voting Rights to 1.4 Million Floridians | Mother Jones

On a muggy August day in 2005, Desmond Meade stood in front of the railroad tracks north of downtown Miami and prepared to take his life. He’d been released from prison early after a 15-year sentence for gun possession was reduced to three years, but he was addicted to crack, without a job, and homeless. “The only thing going through my mind was how much pain I’d feel when I jumped in front of the oncoming train,” Meade said. “I was a broken man.” But the train never came, and eventually Meade walked two blocks to a drug treatment center and checked himself in. He got clean, enrolled in school, and received a law degree from Florida International University in 2014. Meade should have been the archetypal recovery success story­—­“[God] took a crackhead and made a lawyer out of him,” as he put it. But he’s not allowed to practice law. And when his wife ran for the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, he couldn’t vote for her. “My story still doesn’t have a happy ending,” he said. “Because despite the fact that I’ve dedicated my life to being an asset to my community, I still can’t vote.”

Florida: The Voting Security Issues Florida Is Facing This Election Season | WLRN

Two years ago, “spearphishing attacks” -emails targeted towards specific individuals with the intent to steal data for malicious purposes- flooded the inboxes of election officials in several Florida counties. This year, as Florida prepares for the general elections in November, issues around voting security have been front and center. In August, Sen. Bill Nelson claimed Russian hackers had gained access to valuable data on state voters. There has been no evidence found that Florida’s voting system was compromised in 2016, but the attempts to breach systems have led to the state receiving $19 million in federal money for election security.

Florida: Will Florida’s Ex-Felons Finally Regain the Right to Vote? | The New York Times

Twenty-five years ago, when he was a sophomore at Ohio State, Neil Volz started volunteering for his state senator, Bob Ney. Volz grew up in a family that wasn’t especially political, but he was drawn to libertarian principles about limited regulation and taxation, and a political-science professor connected him with Ney, who was about to run in the Republican primary for an open seat in Congress. When Ney won his congressional election in 1994, the year Newt Gingrich’s “Republican revolution” swept Democrats from power in Washington, he asked Volz to join his staff. Volz was 24 (he had taken time off from college), and he decided to rent a car to drive to Washington and take the job. “It was a dream come true, honestly,” he told me.

Florida: State Supreme Court Asked To Block Amendments From Ballot That Allegedly Violate First Amendment | WLRN

Arguing that the measures would violate First Amendment rights, an attorney for two plaintiffs urged the Florida Supreme Court  to uphold a lower-court ruling that would block three proposed constitutional amendments from going before voters in November.  Attorney Joseph Little filed a 50-page brief last Friday after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office last week requested that the Supreme Court allow the ballot measures to move forward. The Supreme Court has not said whether it will hold oral arguments in the case, which stems from ballot proposals approved this year by the Florida Constitution Revision Commission.

Florida: State rejects tens of thousands of mail ballots | Miami Herald

A study of Florida’s past two presidential elections finds that mail ballots were 10 times more likely to be rejected than votes cast at early voting sites or on election day. The study also found that mail ballots cast by youngest voters, blacks and Hispanics were much more likely to be rejected than mail ballots cast by white voters, and that those voters are less likely to cure problems with their ballots when notified by election supervisors than other voters. The study also shows that rejection rates vary widely across the state. The report was produced by Daniel Smith, chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida, on behalf of the ACLU of Florida, whose director, Howard Simon, cited the state’s “uncertain history in election administration” in a conference call with reporters.

Florida: Ballot Could Restore Ex-Felon Voting Rights | The Atlantic

This November, Florida voters will choose a new governor in one of the nation’s most contested—and consequential—races. But if they look to the bottom of the ballot, they will also be asked to decide whether the right to vote should be granted to 1.5 million former felons who live in the state. With Iowa and Kentucky, Florida is one of just three states in the nation to automatically and permanently keep anyone who has committed a felony from ever voting again. A grassroots movement headed by former felons seeks to change that. Amendment Four’s two leading advocates and most dogged supporters make for strange bedfellows: Neil Volz, a white, conservative former congressional chief of staff who was sentenced to probation for his role in a lobbying scandal; and Desmond Meade, a black, formerly homeless man who served several years in prison for drug and weapon charges. Together, they are asking the state’s voters—citizens, they emphasize, just like them—for forgiveness.

Florida: Felon disenfranchisement system under intense national glare | Tampa Bay Times

For only the third time this year — but this time under a withering national media glare — Florida’s highest elected officials sat in judgment Tuesday of people whose mistakes cost them the right to vote. During a five-hour hearing, 90 felons made their case to Florida Gov. Rick Scott and three members of the Cabinet, asking to have their rights restored. It was a packed house in the Cabinet room of the state Capitol, as Tuesday’s hearing drew reporters and cameras from, among other outlets, NPR, The Huffington Post and The Guardian. The hearings typically attract one or two members of the Tallahassee press corps.

Florida: Ballot measure looks to restore felon voting rights | Fox News

More than 1.5 million Florida residents are barred from voting in state elections for the rest of their lives, because of a tough law that permanently revokes voting rights for anyone convicted of a felony. But a measure on the November ballot could change that, allowing those who have served their time to cast votes as soon as the 2020 elections. The “Voting Restoration Amendment,” also called Amendment 4, was approved to be on the ballot back in January after gathering the requisite 766,200 signatures and would automatically restore voting rights to felons – murderers and sex offenders not included – who have done prison time, completed parole or probation and paid any restitution. Florida’s ballot measure is part of a broader move over the last few decades to restore voting rights to felons, but is the first to put it to voters to decide.

Florida: Judge orders 32 Florida counties to help Puerto Rican voters | Associated Press

A federal judge ordered 32 Florida counties to provide sample ballots in Spanish so Puerto Rican voters can use them to navigate English-only ballots in a ruling Friday that was often sarcastic and scolding. A coalition of groups sued the Department of State and the county supervisors in the hope they’d be forced to produce bilingual or Spanish language ballots. While U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker agreed with the defendants that it would be nearly impossible to change election software and to redesign ballots before the Nov. 6 election, he ordered them to make provisions for Puerto Rican voters. “While lost on some, Puerto Rico is part of the United States,” Walker said in his ruling. “The American flag has flown over the island since 1898, and its people have been American citizens  since 1917.”

Florida: Federal judge weighs dispute challenging Florida counties that don’t provide Spanish ballots | Orlando Weekly

A federal judge Wednesday will hear arguments in a lawsuit seeking to require 32 Florida counties to provide Spanish-language ballots and other materials to Puerto Ricans who are eligible to vote in the state. The arguments, which focus heavily on the federal Voting Rights Act, will come almost exactly two months before the Nov. 6 general election. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker will consider a request from plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction that would require Spanish-language ballots and assistance for what are believed to be more than 30,000 Puerto Ricans. “The counties at issue in this case are home to a class of thousands of Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans —- including those who recently arrived after Hurricane Maria —- who are eligible to vote but are unable to vote effectively in English,” the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction said. “But despite repeated requests to many of the counties to provide Spanish-language election materials and assistance to protect the rights of these Floridians, the counties continue to conduct English-only elections that effectively deprive those citizens of their right to vote.”

Florida: About 1,700 ballots were too big to be scanned at Duval County | WOKV

The Duval County Supervisor of Elections Office is using a new vendor for ballot printing this election, and some of those ballots are slightly larger than the specs that allow them to be read by machines at polling locations. WOKV first received reports from some voters, who said their ballots were not being read by the machines, and instead the ballots were being collected by poll workers. Duval Chief Elections Officer Robert Phillips confirms to WOKV that some ballots were printed with a very slight variance from the specs, meaning they are too wide for many of the machines at the polling locations to accept. By Tuesday night, Phillips told WOKV that around 1,700 ballots could not be scanned, across 45 precincts. It appears to be mostly non-partisan ballots having this problem, although there have been some partisan ballots that did not fit as well. 

Florida: Duval County vote count could have ‘delay’ after ballot size snafu | Florida Politics

Voting machine issues are cropping up in Jacksonville precincts as Election Day continues. And “unscanned ballots,” some worry, may add drama to the count this evening. The problem: the width of some ballots, mostly but not exclusively NPA, is too broad for the tabulation machine. However, Supervisor of Elections Mike Hogan expressed confidence, saying the size issue “might delay it somewhat but we plan on finishing it tonight.” We reported this morning about ballot tabulation issues at Mandarin’s Precinct 606, where a machine had rejected ballots, requiring a manual count.

Florida: Cyber-threats abound as Florida gets ready to vote | Tampa Bay Times

Tuesday’s primary is a dry run for democracy in a tense time of cyber-threats. It will be the most thorough test of voting operations since Russian operatives tried to hack Florida voting rolls before the 2016 presidential election. But it’s not one election, it’s 67 — one in every county from the Keys to Pensacola. As counties plan for what’s often a low-turnout election, they have spent millions of dollars safeguarding computer servers, installing surveillance cameras and card readers, building security barriers and training workers to detect threats they can’t see. “We want to make sure that our employees know what a phishing email looks like,” says Lisa Lewis, supervisor of elections in Volusia County, a county the Russians targeted two years ago. “If there’s no subject line, I tell people, ‘Don’t open it.’ “

Florida: Primary is big test for security of voting process | Miami Herald

Tuesday’s primary is a dry run for democracy in a tense time of cyber-threats. It will be the most thorough test of voting operations since Russian operatives tried to hack Florida voting rolls before the 2016 presidential election. But it’s not one election, it’s 67 — one in every county from the Key West to Pensacola. As counties plan for what’s often a low-turnout election, they have spent millions of dollars safeguarding computer servers, installing surveillance cameras and card readers, building security barriers and training workers to detect threats they can’t see. “We want to make sure that our employees know what a phishing email looks like,” says Lisa Lewis, supervisor of elections in Volusia County, a county the Russians targeted two years ago. “If there’s no subject line, I tell people, ‘Don’t open it.’ ”

Florida: Election official: Bilingual ballots in 32 Florida counties is ‘recipe for disaster’ | Tampa Bay Times

Another Florida voting rights case heads to court Tuesday as advocacy groups ask a judge to tell the state to direct 32 counties to print voting materials in English and Spanish in the November election. The plaintiffs argue that Hurricane Maria forced Puerto Rican voters to evacuate to counties all over Florida, including many places where all ballots, signs and other materials are printed only in English. The lawsuit was filed by Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, Faith in Florida, Hispanic Federation, UnidosUS and Vamos4PR on behalf of a voter who’s registered in Gainesville, Marta Valentina Rivera Madera. The groups want election materials be printed in both languages in 32 counties, including Monroe, Pasco and Hernando.

Florida: Election officials seek info as support builds for Nelson’s Russian-hack claim | McClatchy

Florida election officials said Saturday they are seeking more information to combat any possibility of ongoing hacking efforts on county voting systems, as support mounted over the weekend for Sen. Bill Nelson’s recent claims that Russian operatives have “penetrated” some county voter registration databases in Florida ahead of the 2018 elections. A U.S. government official familiar with the matter confirmed to McClatchy on Saturday an NBC news report that Nelson was right when he said Russian hackers had “penetrated” some of Florida’s county voting systems. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee told Nelson recently that operatives working for Russia penetrated some county voter registration databases in Florida. That appears to represent new information about fallout from a Russian hacking operation nearly two years ago and not evidence of a fresh attack, the government official familiar with the matter said. And on Saturday, Nelson defended himself against claims by Gov. Rick Scott, his likely opponent in a hotly contested U.S. Senate election, that he was careless with classified information.

Florida: Civil rights groups sue for bilingual ballots in Florida | The Hill

Civil rights groups in Florida are suing for bilingual ballots, claiming the English-language ballots in a state with a growing population of Spanish-speakers are a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Civic engagement groups Faith in Florida, Hispanic Federation, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, UnidosUS, and Vamos4PR on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Florida’s secretary of State and the elections supervisors of 32 Florida counties. The groups are calling for these counties to offer bilingual ballots and assistance for non English-speakers, with a focus on the growing population of Puerto Ricans in the state. The secretary of State’s office said it would “review” the lawsuit, according to the The Tampa Bay Times.

Florida: Lawsuit seeks Spanish translation of ballots, alleges voting rights violations affecting Puerto Ricans | The Washington Post

Civil rights organizations have asked a federal judge to order the state of Florida and local election officials to provide Spanish-language ballots, literature and translators for voters of Latino descent in time for the midterm election. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, a coalition of nonpartisan groups argue that Florida’s secretary of state and local officials are violating the voting rights of Puerto Ricans, tens of thousands of whom moved to the state in the past year after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. The groups have spent months trying to work with local election officials in 32 counties to provide language services to Spanish-speaking residents.

Florida: Reports of election site hacking rankle Florida officials | Associated Press

Child’s play or a signs of a serious security problem in one of the nation’s swing states? That’s the question confronting Florida election officials who are pushing back against reports that an 11-year-old hacked a replica of the state’s election website. Multiple media outlets over the weekend reported that children at a hacking conference in Las Vegas were able to easily hack into a version of the website that reports election results to the public. An 11-year-old boy got into Florida’s site within 10 minutes, while an 11-year-old girl did it in 15 minutes, according to the organizers of the event called DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village. …  Florida’s election website that displays results is not connected to the actual local election systems responsible for tabulating votes. Instead, on election night supervisors upload unofficial results to state officials through a completely different network.

Florida: An 11-year-old changed election results on a replica Florida state website in under 10 minutes | PBS

An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said. Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states. The boy, who was identified by DEFCON officials as Emmett Brewer, accessed a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website. He was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who were taking part in the so-called “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village,” a portion of which allowed kids the chance to manipulate party names, candidate names and vote count totals.

Florida: Facebook Fight Over Florida Felon Voting Rights Restoration Ends in Shooting | Associated Press

A political argument on Facebook led to a 44-year-old Florida man driving to the home of a stranger he’d been arguing with and shooting and wounding him. Now Brian Sebring faces felony charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed gun. Sebring told the Tampa Bay Times he “just snapped and let primal rage take over” when he left work early on Monday, went home to get his gun and headed to the home of Alex Stephens. Sebring and Stephens, 46, had never met, though they live in the same neighborhood. “I’m not a bad guy,” Sebring told the newspaper, “but I mean, this guy threatened to hurt my family, and I went off the deep end.” Sebring said he’s probably going to see a therapist now because it scares him that “I could lose my temper like that and do something so stupid.”

Florida: State building defenses against Russian hack attack in 2018, but is it too late? | Tallahassee Democrat

Vladimir Putin winks at Mark Earley while the Leon County Elections Supervisor works. The photo of the Russian president was a gift from the Capital Tiger Bay Club to celebrate Earley’s 2016 election victory. “I put some horns on it and keep it on my desk as a reminder that none of this is fake,” said Earley, after a tour of his central office in Tallahassee where Leon County stores information on more than 207,000 voters. The idea Russia conducted an expeditionary probe of the nation’s election infrastructure two years ago for a later attack on democracy keeps Earley and other elections supervisors up at night and on their toes at work. “It’s all real – a clear and present danger,” said Earley.

Florida: Bill Nelson: The Russians have penetrated some Florida voter registration systems | Tampa Bay Times

Russian operatives have “penetrated” some of Florida’s voter registration systems ahead of the 2018 midterms, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday, adding new urgency to concerns about hacking. bThe state, however, said it has received “zero information” supporting his claim. “They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about,” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times before a campaign event in Tampa. He said something similar a day earlier in Tallahassee but declined to elaborate. “That’s classified,” the Democrat said Tuesday. He is facing a re-election challenge in November from Gov. Rick Scott, whose administration said it has no knowledge of the allegations made by Nelson.

Florida: A day after judge blasts state, counties act fast to hold early voting on campus | Tampa Bay Times

A day after a judge struck down Florida’s ban on early voting on college and university campuses, the Gainesville-area supervisor of elections asked the University of Florida to make its student union available for early voting in the November general election — including on a day when the Gators have a home football game. In addition, Tampa’s chief elections official, Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, said he has begun talks with USF leaders about holding early voting at the Marshall Student Center on the campus. The developments come as both parties prepare to mount aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts in a year when Floridians will elect a governor, U.S. senator and other top elected officials and decide whether to restore the right to vote to most convicted felons and ban offshore drilling off the Florida coast.

Florida: Voting rights battle goes to federal appeals court | Associated Press

In a legal showdown over voting rights in the political battleground state of Florida, a group of federal judges asked probing questions Wednesday about how voting rights are restored for some former prisoners but not others. At issue is whether Florida’s process of restoring voting rights to felons is unconstitutional. State officials defend their system, but critics call it arbitrary and unfair. “Is voting an expression protected by the First Amendment?” Judge Darren Gayles asked during Wednesday’s oral arguments in the case. Gayles was among a three-judge panel hearing the arguments at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.