The Right to Vote
Index of Cases
PFAWF is co-counsel on this case on behalf of a group of voter registration organizations and individual plaintiffs who sued in federal court to stop the state of Florida and its county election supervisors from disenfranchising thousands of eligible before the November 2004 general election because of certain non-material omissions in voter registration applications. The defendant county election supervisors rejected thousands of timely submitted Florida Voter Registration Application Forms because of the applicant’s failure to check the “yes” box next to the question “Are you a citizen?” even when the applicant had signed the affirmation on Line 17 attesting that he or she was a U.S. citizen.
On October 26, 2004, the district court dismissed the case without prejudice for lack of standing reasons. The plaintiffs appealed and on September 28, 2005, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the decision of the district court and remanded the case to allow the plaintiffs’ to file an amended complaint.
The sole issue remaining on remand to the district court is whether, if a voter submits his or her registration form prior to the deadline, the state must allow some “grace period” in which voters may correct any inadequacies or incomplete information, even if those corrections are received by the state after the voter registration deadline. The court denied cross-motions for summary judgment on this issue, and trial on this issue is scheduled to take place in February 2008.
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Immediately after Election Day 2006, it became clear that something had gone wrong in Sarasota County, Florida. County election officials were reporting that there had been 18,000 "undervotes" in the race for the 13th congressional district (ironically to replace Katherine Harris) between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings -- votes not recorded in that race for voters who did cast votes in other races on the electronic voting machines used in the county. The total number of votes separating the two candidates was fewer than 400.
The number of undervotes, however, was so staggeringly out of proportion to the undervote percentage in the same race in other counties in CD-13 using different voting machines that PFAWF immediately began investigating. Our investigation, including a town hall meeting held the week after Election Day, revealed that Sarasota County voters attempting to cast votes in the congressional race had been subjected to serious voting machine flaws and irregularities. Among other things, voters reported that while they were certain that they had selected a candidate in the congressional race as they went through the ballot, that selection did not show up on the summary screen at the end of the ballot.
On November 21, 2006, PFAWF, along with the ACLU of Florida, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Voter Action, filed suit in state court on behalf of voters in Sarasota County to contest the result of the election and ask for a re-vote in the congressional race as the only way to remedy the disenfranchisement of so many thousands of voters. The court consolidated this case with a separate lawsuit filed by Jennings, but denied the plaintiffs access to critical evidence concerning the voting machines. Meanwhile, Congress and the GAO conducted the first truly independent review of the machines, in the context of the election challenge filed by Jennings in Congress. In light of that independent review, Jennings and the voters dismissed their complaints in the Florida courts.
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The United States Constitution, the laws of the United States and the laws of Ohio guarantee that all eligible Ohioans have the right to cast a meaningful ballot that is counted. However, over the past 30 years, Ohio has administered the electoral system in such a way that tens of thousands of eligible voters are disenfranchised in each major electoral cycle.
Through its work in Election Protection during the November 2004 presidential election, PFAWF witnessed first hand the enormity of Ohio’s voting administration problem, which starts with an unresponsive registration system that lacks necessary resources and safeguards, and extends to inadequately trained poll workers, long lines, misallocation of voting machines, absentee ballot complications, misinformation relating to provisional ballots and voting machines break downs without a back up.
In response to this wholly broken system, PFAWF and other voting rights organizations filed suit in federal court on July 28, 2005 on behalf of The League of Women Voters and a group of individual plaintiffs seeking a change in the state’s maladministration of the voting process. The litigation is still pending.
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Shortly after it was signed into law in August 2006, the Voting Rights Act Reauthorization Act (VRARA), which extended the key portions of the Voting Rights Act for another twenty-five years, was challenged in federal court by a small utility district in the Austin, Texas area. People For the American Way intervened on behalf of its members, defending the constitutionality of the VRARA. Argument before the three-judge court was heard in September 2007; no ruling has yet been issued.
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At the beginning of July 2006, People For the American Way Foundation joined with a coalition of organizations and individuals involved in voter registration activities in Ohio and filed a federal lawsuit in the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio seeking to challenge portions of recently enacted OH legislation regulating voter registration efforts. The suit also challenges Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell’s interpretation of particular provisions of that legislation. The new OH laws placed a number of unreasonable and vague restrictions and requirements on individuals and groups involved in voter registration activities, subjecting them to criminal penalties for failing to adhere to the onerous restrictions. As a result, many groups had to curtail or completely halt their voter registration activities in Ohio. The litigation is still pending.
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