Sen. Leland Yee’s bill to fast track online voter registration took an initial step forward yesterday. On a party line, 3-2 vote, the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee approved Senate Bill 397, which would allow voters to register to vote by submitting an electronic affidavit via their county’s election office website.
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…
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.…
Bills moving through the Florida Legislature could make the voting process difficult for some Florida voters, including college students. Currently, many students who move to a new county for college can change their addresses at the polls if they want to vote in the county in which they live and go to school.
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…
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…
A few days after New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran notified all 33 county clerks that their biennial voter purge would be canceled this year, Deputy Bernalillo County Clerk Robert Adams made a disturbing discovery — 44,601 county files stored on the state’s voter registration database had been accessed and altered. Accustomed to spending…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Efforts by Sen. Ron Young to reform the state’s voter registration system are gaining traction in the Maryland General Assembly. Young, a Frederick Democrat, sponsored two bills this session to help improve voter registration. They have until midnight Monday, when the General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn, to pass both chambers. The first, which has…
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…
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…
A new plan for to close Idaho’s primary elections and require voters to register by parties could still allow independents to cast a vote in primaries, though party leaders would have the final say on such participation. The chairmen of both the state Republican and Democratic parties say they’d welcome independent voters in their primaries.…
New Hampshire’s new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They’re “foolish,” Speaker William O’Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group. “Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and…
A bill to strip college students of the right to vote conforms with the Founding Fathers’ view of domicile, its lone sponsor argued Thursday. Rep. Gregory Sorg, R-Easton, said he merely wants to return residency for voting to where you came from and not where you’re attending school. “This doesn’t take away the right to…
Nearly one out of four Marylanders who have tried to register to vote at a Motor Vehicle Administration office in the past four years has not been added to the voter rolls, according to state records obtained by The Sun. Though some of these tens of thousands of would-be voters have undoubtedly found alternative methods…