Frank Cerabino at the Palm Beach Post questions the impact of a seemingly innocuous early voting provision in a new Florida election law.
The new law–which is being challenged by Project Vote and the ACLU–would reduce the early voting period, among other provisions. Specifically, Cerabino focuses on the new law’s elimination of the Sunday before Election Day from the early voting period. This is significant, he says, because in 2008, “nearly a third of all the early voters on that final Sunday were black.”
“The black vote in Florida, which went overwhelmingly to President Obama, was especially heavy during early voting,” Cerabino writes. “More than half of the black voters in that election voted before Election Day and many of them went on that final Sunday.”
Churches were a major source of the early voting turnout boom in 2008 as voters depended on the church for transportation and voter information.
Lawmakers, however, say the new law is friendlier to working voters since it gives local election supervisors the option to conduct longer early voting hours on Saturdays.
“But those numbers don’t tell the story, said Estelle Rogers, a lawyer with Project Vote, a national organization that promotes voting in historically underrepresented communities…
‘Not all hours are created equal,’ Rogers said. ‘Churches do a big push on that final Sunday.'”
Project Vote, the ACLU of Florida, and other civil rights groups have also urged the Department of Justice to deny preclearance of the new law in the five Florida jurisdictions that require federal approval before implementing election laws. The new law, they say, “will cause retrogression in minority voting strength” in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Read more here.