Voting roadblock must go

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published August 12, 2007

The state of Florida's population has increased markedly since 2004, yet its voter rolls have shrunk. One reason appears to be a 2005 change in state law that has made it harder for voters who move within the state to maintain an active voter registration. Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark calls the change "insane."

When a voter moves and the U.S. Postal Service or another change-of-address service notifies elections officials, the new law bars supervisors from sending an address confirmation card to the voter's new address. They must send all correspondence to the old registration address, and it may not be forwarded. This is a change that creates unnecessary obstacles to voting.

In the past, elections officials would automatically update the voters' registration and send notice of the change to the new address. Now voters who move are virtually guaranteed not to be told they need to update their voter registration records. It is as though the Legislature was hoping that voters who often move, including renters and low-income people, would have a tougher time exercising their right to vote.

Voters with invalid addresses are put on an inactive list. If they attempt to vote soon thereafter, they can make a correction at the polls. But if they fail to vote in two consecutive federal elections, they are removed from the voting rolls entirely. To vote again, they have to reregister.

Clark expects that plenty of casual voters will show up at the polls and find they're out of luck. She's hoping that the Legislature will change the law before that happens, so she can get proper notice to anyone in danger of losing their franchise.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the state's chief elections official, strongly agrees. He intends to ask lawmakers to put things back the way they were at the next regular legislative session.

The change in the law may have been nothing more than an inadvertent error, or it may have been a sly attempt to quietly disenfranchise certain kinds of voters. Now it just needs to be fixed.

[Last modified August 11, 2007, 21:53:12]