League of Women Voters | Be a Seed for Change

Help Prevent This.

The Right Wing is bent on making voting as difficult as possible. You’ve heard a lot of people complaining about it. Well, we’re doing something about it.

Here in Florida, where the Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion, the Right Wing is field-testing every means known to mankind to discourage voting. They have criminalized voter registration; even the League of Women Voters gave up on it. They have purged the voter rolls in express violation of the Voting Rights Act; Governor Scott basically said, “so sue me.” They cut early voting days in half, because so many African-Americans were voting that way. Their extremist voter ID laws place the burden on the voter to provide his identity to their satisfaction. They have made election administration completely partisan ; do you remember that the head of the 2000 Bush campaign in Florida was in charge of counting the votes? They have created artificial shortages of voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts. They have excluded convicts from voting, and made it virtually impossible for them to restore their constitutional rights. They have even set up roadblocks between voters and polling places on Election Day.

Well, we’re not taking this lying down. We’re fighting back.

Our approach is this: we want to sign up every progressive voter to vote by mail . Here in Florida, when you vote by mail, you get your ballot a month early. It comes to your home, so there is no chance of your going to the wrong precinct. If you lose it, you can get another one. After you mail it in, you can call the Supervisor of Elections, and make sure that it’s been counted. If there is any problem with your ballot, there is plenty of time to fix it.

Compare that to voting on Election Day. If you bring the wrong ID, then if you’re lucky, you’ll get a provisional ballot. You’ll have to go back the next day, and give them what they want. Half of all provision ballots are never counted.

Someone who votes by mail is twice as likely to vote as someone who doesn’t. The highest voter turnout in the 50 States is always in Oregon, where everyone votes by mail.

So we are fighting back by signing up Democrats to vote at home. We are literally going door to door throughout our district, handing Democrats the paperwork that they need to vote at home. We’ve signed up thousands and thousands of them.

And it’s not just for us. Since Florida is the ultimate swing state, we suspect that on Nov. 7, President Obama will be thanking us. And Senator Bill Nelson, too.

It’s still 90 degrees outside on many days here in Orlando. Our district is 100 miles long, and it has almost half a million voters. It’s hard work to drive all around our district and knock on all those doors. To get the numbers that we need, we have to pay people to do it. It costs about $5 for each absentee ballot request that we collect.

But unlike the folks on the other side, we actually want people to vote, and we want every vote to count. So it’s worth it.

What’s it worth to you? If you contribute $10, we can sign up another two progressive voters to vote at home. If you contribute $50, we can sign up ten more.

Those absentee ballots get mailed out in three weeks. We need your help. Please contribute to our “Fight Voter Suppression Fund” today.

Courage,

Alan Grayson

“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”
– Chinese Proverb, paraphrased by UN Ambassador (and Democratic Presidential Nominee) Adlai Stevenson.

Big Voting Rights Win In Florida

Voting rights activists got another victory, this time in Florida, where a federal judge said he would permanently remove harsh restrictions on third-party voter registration groups. Those restrictions, passed as part of a massive electoral overhaul and spearheaded by Gov. Rick Scott (R) had hamstrung non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters from registering voters leading up to the November election.

U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle said he would grant a motion to permanently remove the restrictions as soon as he receives confirmation that a federal appellate court had dismissed the case.

In December the League of Women Voters of Florida, Rock the Vote, and the Florida Public Interest Research Group Education Fund sued to block the restrictions. The Department of Justice also opposed the restrictions and had filed their own lawsuit challenging them. “Florida’s anti-voter law created impassable roadblocks for our volunteers, who have been bringing fellow Floridians into our democratic process for over 72 years,” said Deirdre Macnab, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “Thanks to today’s ruling, we can finally put these roadblocks behind us and concentrate on getting Floridians registered to vote. We are grateful the court recognized that the Constitution does not tolerate these types of barriers to civic participation and voter registration.”

The non-partisan Brennan Center issued a press release applauding the decision.“This order is a decisive victory for Florida voters,” said Lee Rowland, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, one of the attorneys who argued the case for the Plaintiffs. “The Florida legislature has tried repeatedly to stifle access to voter registration opportunities, and once again a federal court has stopped them in their tracks. We are thrilled that voter registration groups can now get back to what they do best — expanding our democracy.”

Rarely these days are the federal courts seen as a safe harbor for individuals aggrieved by state action, but recently in the context of voting rights, they have been. This is a big win for any citizen that believes elected officials should be forced to conduct their affairs in a fair and transparent fashion, especially when it comes to restricting essential civic rights like voting.