This afternoon, the ACLU of Florida sent a letter to Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, in response to his agreement to hold at least one hearing in Florida on Florida’s voter suppression laws. The letter asks him to set the hearing(s) before the January 31 primary and hold them in impacted communities.
The text of today's letter is below and is also available as a PDF.
November 16, 2011
The Honorable Richard J. Durbin
U.S. Senator, Illinois
711 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20501-1304
Dear Senator Durbin,
Thank you for your work to initiate needed hearings into the new restrictive and suppressive voting measures approved by Governor Rick Scott on May 19, 2011 and currently being enforced in Florida.
We agree with your assessment that these new restrictions will disenfranchise a great number of Floridians including young, disabled and lower income voters. Moreover, these restrictions were intended to, and will, have a regressive impact on the voting rights of racial and language minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Members of Congress and the public must be aware of the devastating impact these new changes will have on the right of qualified voters to cast ballots in Florida. Your hearing will help focus attention on this threat to this most fundamental of constitutional freedoms.
I am writing today not just to thank you for your efforts but to strongly encourage you to hold these hearings at the soonest possible opportunity and in some of the Florida communities most affected by the new voting restrictions so you and the other Senators can hear firsthand from those who will suffer most.
Governor Scott and Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning’s rush to implement the new, regressive election changes has created two sets of voting laws in Florida – setting the stage for voter confusion, mass disenfranchisement and yet another national embarrassment for Florida. With a statewide election scheduled in Florida on January 31, 2012 there is little time for Senate hearings to investigate these voter suppression laws and to urge changes before their impact will be realized. Accordingly, I ask that you please consider scheduling these hearings as soon as your schedules will allow – and if possible before the January 31, 2011 state elections.
I also ask that you hold at least three hearings on this mass voter suppression law in Florida – allowing the most impacted citizens and communities to share their concerns directly. Specifically, I recommend hearings in Tallahassee, St. Petersburg and Ft. Lauderdale. Hearings in these communities will allow the Committee to hear needed information directly from the young voters, racial and language minorities as well as low income voters this new law targets.
As you are aware, the ACLU strongly and repeatedly objected to these efforts to suppress the vote and infringe on basic voting rights when they were considered by the Legislature last year. We have also initiated and supported every opportunity to challenge these punitive changes both at the Department of Justice and in the Courts.
We have publicly rejected the baseless justification for this legislation – namely preventing some unspecified and nonexistent “potential fraud.” Your Committee may wish to invite county Supervisors of Elections to testify at these hearings so you can hear directly about the existence or non-existence of voter fraud that could be addressed by the new changes in question.
Rather than address voter fraud, these new, unnecessary laws are designed to manipulate the outcome of elections by making it harder for some groups to vote. It’s a scheme we’ve seen before. The naked political motives help explain why Gov. Scott’s administration has repeatedly delayed and engaged in other distracting legal and political tactics to keep the real impact of these voting changes hidden from public and legal review. Their goal of using election laws and voting rights to manipulate elections by suppressing the vote is so strong that Gov. Scott now is using the ongoing legal battle over these new provisions to challenge the constitutionality of the landmark Voting Rights Act (specifically, Section 5) which has protected racial and language minorities against this very type of attack on their right to vote for more than four decades.
Because the ACLU has opposed these changes from the outset and has a strong history of protecting voting rights, we look forward to the opportunity to assist you and the Committee in these hearings and will be happy to provide any information on Florida’s voter suppression tactics.
Thank you again for your focus and dedication to protect the voting rights of Floridians.
Howard Simon
Executive Director, ACLU of Florida
cc: The Honorable Bill Nelson
U.S. Senator, Florida
716 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20501
The Honorable Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, Florida
317 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC, 20510
