Legal Research

In early April, the Eleventh Circuit upheld Fla. Stat. § 97.053(6), which, a coalition of civil rights groups and voter registration groups contended, improperly deprives Florida residents of the right to vote based on clerical errors made on voter registration forms.  The case of Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Browning tested the application of the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which was passed to remedy the situation which occurred in the 2000 elections, when many qualified voters were turned away from the polls as ineligible.  HAVA provides for the casting of a ?provisional? ballot when voter eligibility is in doubt.  If the voter is subsequently able to show eligibility, then that provisional ballot is counted. 

The Federal Court held that HAVA was not intended to preempt state law, but only to allow the counting of the ballots of those whose registration contained errors if they are later determined to be eligible to vote under state law.  As the Florida law stands, a would-be voter who has entered a nickname on their registration form instead of the name printed on their social security record is barred from voting until the error is corrected, with no opportunity to cast a provisional ballot and later prove their eligibility.  As Justice Barkett pointed out in an impassioned dissent, this provision has operated to disenfranchise some 14,000 Floridians since 2006, the great majority of them minorities.