Ruling allows Florida to reject incomplete voter registrations

Associated Press   26 October 2004

MIAMI - Florida election officials will not be required to process incomplete voter registration forms for the presidential election, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King decided on procedural grounds that the three prospective voters did not have the legal standing to pursue the lawsuit backed by the AFL-CIO, but he gave the union group a chance to file a new version of the lawsuit next month with people who meet the standard.

That leaves the AFL-CIO and the Advancement Project, a social action group, on the losing side of an attempt to force election officials to accept applications from people who failed to check a citizenship box on registration forms in time for the Nov. 2 election.

Sheila Thomas, an attorney with the Washington-based Advancement Project, said the plaintiffs were considering an appeal. The group argued that the rejections had a disparate effect on minorities. Nearly 45 percent of the challenged forms in one county, Duval, came from blacks.

"Our goal is still to see if we can get relief for our clients before Election Day," she said.

Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, said the state was pleased by the decision.

"Once again, federal and state laws are very clear on which sections of the voter registration forms have to be filled out to deem that application complete," she said.

The decision is the latest from courts across the state that rejected attempts to broaden voter rights on touch-screen recounts, provisional ballots and early voting.

Applicants are required to sign a form that, among other things, attests to U.S. citizenship, but the form also has a separate box to be checked by citizens.

The union coalition sued Hood and election supervisors in Duval, Orange, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.