ELECTIONS

Judge: No evidence Florida slowing verification of 72,000 recently registered voters

Arek Sarkissian
arek.sarkissian@naplesnews.com; 850-559-7620

TALLAHASSEE -- A federal judge on Thursday rejected a request from the Florida Democratic Party to allow unverified voters to cast ballots, saying state and county officials already are doing enough to meet the demands of an extended registration deadline.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark E. Walker said there is no evidence that Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner is not doing everything possible to process the 72,000 voter registration forms received by county election offices during the week he added to the state's voter registration deadline to assist residents affected by Hurricane Matthew.

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Walker said Detzner "is making a Herculean effort to make sure there are hours and staffing to assure everyone has a chance to cast vote in this year's election."

Florida voter registration deadline extended to Oct. 18

Florida Democratic Party lawyer Kevin Hamilton argued the state election manual that poll workers use includes instructions on processing unverified voters at the polling site.

Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer testified that process was dangerous and could allow someone who ultimately is not eligible to vote.

"You're not going to get that ballot back," Latimer said.

An option already in place for voters who cannot prove eligibility at a polling center is the provisional ballot. That ballot is set aside from the regular count and the voter's eligibility is verified after the election by a canvassing board.

Hamilton said after the hearing the Democratic Party sees nothing wrong with the provisional ballot process. But residents affected by Hurricane Matthew, which tore a path along the Atlantic Coast two weeks ago, should be able to have their registration verified the day they vote.

"These are people impacted by a hurricane," Hamilton said, adding provisional ballots may not be counted by the canvassing board. "When you vote on a provisional ballot, it's not counted unless the canvassing board approves your ballot."

Ronald Labasky, a lawyer for the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, said training poll workers to conduct on site voter registration verifications about two weeks before the election is impossible.

"We could not have had poll workers ascertain their voting status at the polls," Labasky said. "That's not something they're trained to do."

Democrats had asked Walker to require all voter registration forms to be processed by Oct. 23, the day before 50 of the state's 67 counties begin the early voting period.

The party also wanted to force Detzner's office to issue detailed lists that identified pending registrants that Democrats or Republicans can call to offer assistance.

Florida Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews testified that those lists, which are public record, require several steps to create. They also require redaction for public records exemptions that forbid the release of home addresses for judges, law enforcement and certain crime victims.

"It's not just one program we use to create those lists," Matthews said. "Also we have to scrub those lists for any information we are not allowed to release."

Florida Secretary of State Office lawyer Robert Pass said his agency already was working at the highest level possible.

"We can't work people any harder, and we don't have any more people," Pass said.

Detzner has promised to have all of the voter registration forms submitted by the Tuesday deadline to be processed by Oct. 29, the last day that early voting can start in the state. As of Thursday, 51,000 people who submitted voter registration forms after the original Oct. 10 deadline were verified. Another 21,000 were going through the verification process.

Latimer said his office already had a backlog of 11,000 voter registration forms before Walker issued the extension, and another 10,000 were submitted during the extended week. Although he anticipated more forms that were postmarked by the Tuesday deadline, Latimer said he expected his staff to meet the Oct. 29 deadline. He had a staff of 30 people working overtime and on weekends to handle an average of 4,000 applications each day.

"I expect to keep that up all the way until the deadline," Latimer said.

County supervisors of elections accept and process the registration forms before they are sent to the Florida Department of State for verification. The vast majority of the forms are verified via driver's license or social security number, which take up to 48 hours.

"We all want to work as hard as we can to make sure everyone who is eligible can vote in this year's election," Matthews said.

Walker praised Detzner for bringing in extra help to meet the Oct. 29 deadline. The judge's glowing comments were in sharp contrast to what he wrote over the weekend in another case also brought by the Democratic Party. He had said Detzner's office was "taking a knee" to delay a ruling that ultimately forced the state to allow mail-in ballots with mismatched signatures to be corrected by voters before Election Day.

As for the voter registration forms, Detzner brought in extra employees, "clearly in a good-faith effort to comply with this court's order," Walker said.

The Republican Party of Florida supported Detzner along with the Florida Senate. State GOP lawyer Daniel Nordby said they did not want to get in the way of Detzner and county elections offices.

"The last thing they needed was the Democrats' attempt to change the rules at this late date," Nordby said. "Every eligible voter who wants to vote should do so with confidenc ethat their votes will be counted."

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