The Brennan Center for Justice

by Jeremy Leaming

Unless the Department of Justice and civil rights groups are able to block or greatly minimize Florida’s onerous new restrictions on voting and kill the state’s tawdry attempt to purge voter rolls, the constitutional right to vote for many will face serious obstacles in the sunshine state.

Florida is by no means the only state bent on making the right to a vote a major pain. Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, and other Republican controlled states have been working feverishly to ensure that turnout among Latino voters, African American voters, low-income voters, the elderly, and college voters is greatly reduced in this year’s general election. Because Florida is deemed a swing state by political reporters, it garners more attention than some of the other state actions. But Fla. Gov. Rick Scott has also helped attract attention with his staunch defense of the voter suppression tactics.

The DOJ and a string of civil rights groups, such as the Advancement Project, the Brennan Center for Justice, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the League of Women voters, and others, are fighting the purge and the state’s onerous new voter restrictions.  

Co-Director of the Advancement Project Judith Browne blasted Gov. Scott’s purge as a partisan effort to “suppress the vote.”

Ryan P. Haygood, director of the Political Participation Group at NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in a press statement about a lawsuit challenging changes to Florida’s voting laws, said his group is battling an attempt to “discourage political participation” especially of the state’s minority voters.

“Implementation of these additional discriminatory changes to Florida’s voting laws would be devastating for Black and other minority voters in the state,” Haygood said.

The groups’ efforts may irk the state’s right-wing politicians and their apologists in the media, but they are likely the only hope for salvaging the right to vote for scores of Latinos, African Americans, the elderly and many others.

The Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters, among other groups, have sued to scuttle portions of Florida’s new voter suppression law, such as the rigid requirements on voter registration drives and stringent requirements for voter identification. As noted here they have had some success with a federal judge blocking the provision against third-party voter registrations.

by Jeremy Leaming

Attorney General Eric Holder, earlier this week, signaled he is ready to challenge the efforts some states are taking to limit voting. Holder, in his speech at the LBJ presidential library, said states should take action to encourage more voters, not create barriers to participation in democracy.  

“In 1965, when President Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act into law, he proclaimed that, ‘the right to vote is the basic right, without which all others are meaningless,’” Holder said.

“Since January,” Holder continued, “more than a dozen states have advanced new voting measures. Some of these new laws are currently under review by the Justice Department, based on our obligations under the Voting Rights Act. Texas and South Carolina, for example, have enacted laws establishing new photo identification requirements that we’re reviewing. We are also examining a number of changes that Florida has made to its electoral process, including changes to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, as well as changes to early voting procedure, including the number of days in the early voting period.”

Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, lauded Holder’s comments, saying, “We hope the Justice Department will enforce the law and protect the voting rights of all Americans in its assessment of new voting laws.” The Center’s “Voting Law Changes in 2012,” report released earlier this fall says the new restrictions could bar more than 5 million Americans from participating in next year’s elections.

Efforts by federal lawmakers to look into the onerous voting regulations picked up earlier this fall, when Reps. John Conyers Jr., Jerrold Nadler and House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer urged congressional hearings into the laws and sent letters to state officials calling on them to oppose “new state measures adopted over the last year that would make it harder for eligible voters to register or vote.”

Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) this week joined the effort to counter the states’ restrictive voting measures, which have been pushed largely by Republican state lawmakers to dampen voter turnout of minorities. The senators introduced a bill this week that would “create tough new criminal and civil penalties for those who create and distribute false and deceptive voting information and campaign literature,” a press release issued from Cardin’s office states.