Judge Won’t Extend Florida’s Voter Registration Amid Hurricanes
A federal judge denied a request from voting rights groups on Wednesday to reopen Florida’s voter registration due to the impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The deadline to register was Monday.
“The League of Women Voters of Florida is disappointed with Judge [Robert] Hinkle’s decision to deny reopening of voter registration despite the devastation caused by two major hurricanes within a two-week span,” Cecile Scoon and Debbie Chandler, co-presidents of the organization, said in a statement.
The League of Women Voters of Florida and the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a lawsuit and emergency motion on Wednesday. The groups asked the court to reopen Florida’s voter registration for at least 10 additional days after DeSantis refused to extend the deadline, despite multiple pleas from civic groups.
Amid the chaos of hurricanes Helene and Milton, DeSantis’ refusal to extend the deadline will have a significant impact on voter turnout in Florida this November.
Sign up for our free newsletters so you never miss a new lawsuit or court decision that could impact who takes the White House this fall.
While explaining the reasoning for his decision, Hinkle said that if someone was evacuating ahead of Milton, they could’ve still registered online while evacuating, since the form shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete. He added that he hoped that didn’t sound “insensitive,” according to reporting from the Florida Phoenix.
Scoon and Chandler expressed their disappointment with that argument, explaining how detrimental this decision is to voting rights.
“The League believes that mandatory evacuations for both Hurricanes Helene and Milton left many citizens more focused on survival than on registering to vote,” Scoon and Chandler said. “Florida residents should not have to juggle fleeing for their lives and protecting their property with fulfilling their civic duties.”
Georgia voting rights groups also asked a court to extend their voter registration deadline after Helene, and a hearing will continue Thursday afternoon in the case. The judge seemed “skeptical” of their request, according to reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Learn more about the case here.
Read the League of Women Voters’ statement here.
Previous update, Oct. 9
Voting rights groups sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) on Tuesday, asking them to reopen voter registration amid Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The League of Women Voters of Florida and the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed the lawsuit after DeSantis ignored pleas from dozens of groups to extend Monday’s voter registration deadline.
“Governor DeSantis has shown little regard for the storm’s impact on voting rights,” Cecile Scoon and Debbie Chandler, co-presidents of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said on Tuesday. “While issuing mandatory evacuation orders, he has refused to extend the voter registration deadline, disenfranchising many Floridians who were unable to register due to a disaster beyond their control.”
Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm, made landfall in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and Hurricane Milton — projected to be one of the worst hurricanes in a century — will hit the state late on Wednesday night or early on Thursday morning. The upcoming storm could directly strike the Tampa Bay metro area, home to over three million people.
The groups asked a federal district court to order DeSantis and Byrd to reopen Florida’s voter registration for at least 10 days and prohibit them from enforcing the state’s Monday deadline.
The plaintiffs argued that DeSantis’ decision not to extend the deadline in these extenuating circumstances violates the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by placing an undue burden on the right to vote.
In the lawsuit, the groups explained that in Florida, voters have to be registered by the state’s deadline to vote in elections. The state doesn’t offer same-day registration like many other states do.
Also, the voting rights organizations noted that “a significant number of Floridians register to vote in the weeks, and especially days, leading up to the registration deadline,” and in the final days before the deadline, many Floridians were recovering from the effects of Helene and preparing for Milton — including evacuating their homes.
In 2020, over 200,000 new voters registered during the last few days of the voter registration period, the plaintiffs stated. Due to the hurricanes, the League of Women Voters of Florida had to cancel multiple voter registration efforts.
On Monday, DeSantis said, “People can register today. There is nothing inhibiting you from registering today.” The plaintiffs said that “[n]othing could be further from the truth.”
Ultimately, the groups argued in the lawsuit that “beyond any minor administrative inconvenience, it is difficult to see how [state officials] would suffer any harm if they were required to continue accepting registration applications for an additional ten days.”
The plaintiffs also filed an emergency motion with the court, asking them to grant their requests either temporarily or permanently while litigation is ongoing since Election Day is less than a month away. Due to this, the court scheduled a hearing in the case for 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
Read the memo on the emergency motion here.
Learn more about the case here.
Original post, Oct. 7
Voting rights groups asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to extend the state’s voter registration deadline ahead of Hurricane Milton. This follows a request made Friday in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
“Today is the deadline to register to vote in Florida. But many communities across the state are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton is projected to make landfall Wednesday on the central Gulf Coast,” the groups said Monday.
In Friday’s letter, a coalition of voting and civil rights organizations, including the ACLU of Florida, Black Voters Matter, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center, called on DeSantis, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) and other state election officials to push back the deadline.
The groups thanked DeSantis for issuing an executive order on Thursday making emergency changes, like allowing counties to move polling places less than 30 days before the election, but they argued that it didn’t go far enough.
“Floridians have lost homes and loved ones to Hurricane Helene, and voter registration will not have been a top priority in the immediate aftermath of the storm, even if they had planned to vote in the November election,” the organizations wrote in the letter. “No one should miss out on voting due to a natural disaster.”
In that letter, they asked state officials to push the voter registration deadline back to Oct. 15, but now, with Hurricane Milton on the horizon, they are asking for an indefinite extension.
The voting rights groups explained in Monday’s statement that the current situation has the highest impact on residents who just moved to Florida or eligible voters who just turned 18 and likely haven’t registered.
DeSantis said during a Monday morning press conference that he would not change the voter registration deadline at this time.