The Hanging Chad of 2008 (Or The Terrible Florida Voter Typo Law)

By Justin Levitt

It is early November, election night, and polls are closed around the country -- only in Florida, we are still not sure who won. Tens of thousands of ballots sit stacked, Republican and Democratic, and county officials feel the eyes of the nation on each and every one. The voters are eligible, we're sure of that -- we're just not sure if an unnecessary administrative rule is going to stop them from counting.

Again.

Meet the hanging chad of 2008: Florida's "no match, no vote" rule.

On Tuesday, a federal court refused to block this latest stage of Florida's voter obstacle course. The law stops you from voting if the state cannot verify your driver's license or Social Security number, no matter what kind of ID you bring to the polls.

The state's error-laden process starts with a typo. You fill out your voter registration form, complete and accurate, and send it in on time. Somewhere, deep in the bureaucracy, someone's fingers slip on a keyboard. Now your information doesn't match what's in some other government database. And now you're not registered to vote.

The Social Security Administration says that it cannot find a "match" for 46 percent of the forms that it processes. In Florida, that means voter registration ends up slightly more reliable than a coin flip.

The damage is clear, and clearly growing. In 2006, the typo law kept more than 12,800 citizens off the rolls. By December 2007, more than 16,000 voters were blocked. These aren't guesses, they're people. People like 68-year-old Eugene McKenna. Or 52-year-old Amrita Hansra, who had just earned her citizenship when she was disenfranchised by a typo.

The wave of voter registration is just now getting underway for the presidential election, dwarfing the volume of the past two years. Tens of thousands of eligible citizens have already been hung up by someone else's predictable and pointless mistake; tens of thousands more will be blocked before fall.

There may still be a chance to avert the coming storm. County election supervisors bear both the administrative brunt of the typo law and the responsibility for avoiding it.

Right now, people can fix the typo problem by showing a driver's license or Social Security card where they registered to vote. But they cannot do so at the polls, which is the one place that Florida voters already expect to show ID. It's worth repeating: you cannot prove your identity by showing an ID card at the voting booth -- which is the one place you know you must bring ID in order to vote. That confounds logic. It also confounds voters. And it will certainly confound the counties, who will be bathing in provisional ballots on Election Day.

The county supervisors can and should slice through the senseless knot the state has created. If the number on a card has to be confirmed, let voters confirm the number at the same time they have to show the card anyway.

Floridians have suffered too much already from foreseeable mistakes. Needlessly disenfranchising eligible citizens is a mistake we need not make again.

Justin Levitt is Counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and argued the case on behalf of voting rights advocates.

Comments

[larmarch5]

Maybe some Iraquis can come over to FL and do a thumbprint vote for them. Remember when Americans lamented on low voter turnout? And now the Rethugs are trying to keep people from voting. OMG we must not let this proceed. Take your phone with you to the polls and videotape any problems.