Florida League Of Women Voters Drops Registration Plan Over Restrictive Laws
It’s SO much easier to win elections when you can keep the other side from getting registered to vote.
tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com
The bill, HB 1355, shortened the length of the sunshine state’s early voting period and stopped voters from being able to change their address at the polls.
But the law’s restrictions on third-party voter registration groups could do the most damage, and have already forced one of the oldest voter education groups out of the voter registration game altogether. Such groups would face stiff fines unless they turned in voter registration cards within 48 hours of them being filled out.
The League of Women Voters announced they were dropping their voter registration program just after the law was rushed through by Republicans in the legislature in May.
Deirdre MacNabb, president of the Florida League of Women Voters, told TPM in a phone interview this week that they just couldn’t operate under the restrictions.
“When we looked at the laws, we felt that this would put our thousands of volunteers across the state who have registered voters for 70 years in Florida at a grave disadvantage,” MacNabb said.
Volunteers would have to have “a secretary on one hand and a lawyer on the other hand as they registered voters,” MacNabb said.