Politics

Florida law blocks voters, judges told

The legislation, which is temporarily on hold, was enacted in the wake of the 2000 dispute.

ATLANTA - Tens of thousands of Floridians will be barred from voting in the 2008 election if a state voter registration law is allowed to go back into effect, lawyers for minority groups said Friday.

In a hearing before a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, lawyers for the Florida NAACP and other groups asked that a temporary injunction against the 2005 law stay in place.

The law requires that information on voter applications match driver's license or Social Security card databases. Florida officials - still haunted by the election of 2000 - say the law is a centerpiece of their efforts to prevent fraud and restore public confidence in the electoral process.

But the law created a system in which a simple mistake on a voter registration application can knock would-be voters out of an election, even if they present valid drivers' licenses or passports.

The 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to a close vote in Florida that led to recounts, lawsuits and allegations that then-Gov. Jeb Bush somehow manipulated the election to favor his older brother.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which established minimum election administration standards. The 2005 Florida statute was authorized by that federal law, said attorneys for the Florida Department of State.

"This is a more strict law" than the 2002 statute, but states were allowed to go beyond the federal legislation, said Peter Antonacci, a Tallahassee lawyer arguing for the state.

Florida says any would-be voter who has a valid driver's license or Social Security card must provide the identification numbers from at least one of those cards as part of a voter application. Officials check the numbers on the application against state or federal databases.

The problem is information on applications sometimes doesn't match what's in the databases, said Justin Levitt, the New York lawyer arguing on behalf of the Florida NAACP and its co-plainitffs.

Applicants can make errors, and so can state employees who type individuals' information into computers. Even if numbers are all entered correctly, inconsistencies can surface if, for example, a married woman is still identified in a government database by her maiden name, or if a man puts "Bill" on his application while "William" is in the computer.

Plaintiffs also were concerned Haitian-Americans and Hispanics who use compound names like "Jean-Robert Martin" or "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" could find themselves with part of their first or last name listed as a middle name and unable to be matched, plaintiffs argued.

Florida rejects much higher proportions of Hispanic and black voter applicants than white applicants, attorneys said.

Voters who have trouble with the matching law are given a chance to clear it up, but it must be done at least 29 days before an election. Many don't meet that deadline. About 12,000 Floridians missed the 2006 election because of identification problems, Levitt said.

In December a U.S. District Court judge in Gainesville issued a temporary injunction after deciding the state statute conflicted with federal law.

During Friday's 68-minute hearing before three federal judges, Florida officials asked that the injunction be lifted.

While the injunction is in place, the state has been processing applications even in cases where identifications aren't matched.

[Last modified January 18, 2008, 22:13:18]