By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-969854.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Despite the pleas from bill opponents, including one of Florida's U-S senators, Governor Rick Scott signed a controversial election bill into law this week. Tom Flanigan reports the new law still faces federal scrutiny and threats of lawsuits are rumbling.
Governor Scott signed the bill while on a trip to South Florida. He wasn't immediately available to talk about the matter, but Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning was. He called reporters into his Tallahassee office right after bill signing took place.
"I know bad election law when I see it. I don't think that this bill is bad for Florida."
Browning says he bases that opinion on long experience in the trenches. He served twenty-six years as supervisor of elections in Pasco County. This is his second time around as Florida's secretary of state. But opponents of the bill remain unconvinced. During the sometimes contentious debate on the bill in the legislature, those opponents, such as Florida's Senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, were unrelenting in their criticism.
"The state legislature is going about doing a one-eighty to reverse the policy that had been trying to be protected here in the state of Florida."
Browning says he's not overly concerned, or impressed, by the high-level critique.
"The members of congress and Senator Nelson are certainly entitled to their own opinion. I mean, they're policy-makers on the federal level. All I know is what I read in the bill and my many, many years of experience and what I believe the outcome of this bill will be on Florida's voters and the elections process and I'm just going to leave it at that."
But the new law may still face hurdles. For one thing, Browning notes that it's only the law in sixty-two out of Florida's sixty-seven counties.
"There are five counties. Those counties being Collier, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe. So those five counties obviously it's not effective in those counties. We've checked with those five counties (and) we've been told they don't have elections coming up until October, so we're confident the bill would be pre-cleared before October."
"Pre-clearance" is federal approval for the voting law changes to take effect in those five counties. That's because Florida, as well as several other Southern states, had a history of discriminatory voting laws before 1965. That's when the federal Voting Rights Act kicked in. It requires affected states to "pre-clear" subsequent voting law changes with the U-S Department of Justice. Secretary Browning is confident the new law will pass with flying colors. League of Women Voters of Florida President Deidre McNab isn't so sure.
"In the meantime, the League of Women Voters is certainly exploring legal options. We are also having a wait and see (on) what is happening. So we have no announcement to make as far as a legal challenge, other than to say that we are watching the situation very closely and evaluating what is happening on behalf of Florida's voters."
At least a few Florida counties are also worried about the possible cost of the new law. Even though the allowed number of early voting hours remains the same at ninety-six, those hours would have to be compressed into half the number of early voting days. Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho says that means a big jump in overtime pay.
"We estimate between these kinds of changes that, to Leon County taxpayers, this unnecessary election bill will cost as much as three-hundred-thousand dollars per year."
Sancho says the hit would be far more in larger counties. Browning suggests a different staffing plan would solve that problem.
"And if I were still in Pasco County, we would be going to twelve hours and we'd be doing two shifts per day; two eight-hour shifts to avoid overtime. Absolutely. And so these supervisors that continue to beat the overtime drum over and over and over again, I don't think that argument holds water."
But there are arguments that Browning believes do hold water...the ones made by lawmakers who passed the measure.
"One of those areas were in fact the whole idea of either the voter fraud, dealing with the change of address provision, or the third party voter registration. And so I think we're certainly being proactive as opposed to being reactive. And certainly that would be true with anything in our lives. If we know that something has the potential of causing harm, we want to do whatever it takes to ensure that that's not the case."
The new law is already getting its first test. There's a special election in Miami-Dade on the twenty-fourth of this month. That election was subject to the old Florida voting law up until May nineteenth. Now, the new law applies. For the first time, voters who wait until Election Day to register a name or address change will have to cast a provisional ballot. But Browning says he's already sent out a message to election supervisors.
"Directing them to direct their canvassing boards that unless there is evidence of fraud in provisional ballots, they shall count those provisional ballots."
A move that Browning says should help reassure those who believe the new law is simply a ploy by Republican lawmakers to disenfranchise voters on the bluish side of the political spectrum.