Old Law | New Law | |
---|---|---|
Total Days | 12–14 | 8 |
Weekend Days | 2–4 | 3 |
Sundays | 0–2 | 1 |
Total Hours | 96 | 48–96 |
Weekend Hours | 16 | 18–36 |
Sunday Hours | 0–16 | 6–12 |
Early voting shall begin on the 15th day before an election and end on the 2nd day before an election.... Early voting shall be provided for 8 hours per weekday and 8 hours in the aggregate each weekend at each site during the applicable periods. Early voting sites shall open no sooner than 7 a.m. and close no later than 7 p.m. on each applicable day.
Early voting shall begin on the 10th day before an election that contains state or *1241 federal races and end on the 3rd day before the election, and shall be provided for no less than 6 hours and no more than 12 hours per day at each site during the applicable period.
[W]e cannot preclear Florida's early voting changes at this time because the State failed to satisfy its burden of proving that those changes will not have a retrogressive effect on minority voters if the covered counties offer only the minimum number of early voting hours required under the new statute, which would constitute only half the hours required under the prior law. We also conclude, however, that if Florida and the covered counties were to submit a preclearance plan that offered early voting for the maximum number of hours authorized by the new statute, which would be exactly the same number as under the prior law, and did so on a standard 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. schedule, Florida likely would satisfy its burden of proving that the overall effect of its changes in law would be nonretrogressive.
from enforcing § 101.657(1)(d), Fla. Stat. (2011) which requires early voting as defined in § 97.021(8), Fla. Stat. (2011) to start on the 10th day prior to Election Day and end on the 3rd day before an election (the “Sunday Voting Ban”) and reinstating early voting beginning on the 15th day before election day and ending on the 2d day before an election as required in § 101.657(1)(d), Fla. Stat. (2005).
(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color....
based on the totality of the circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of [the protected class] in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
(1) discriminatory intent on the part of legislators or other officials responsible for creating or maintaining the challenged system; or (2) objective factors that, under the totality of the circumstances, show the exclusion of the minority group from meaningful access to the political process due to the interaction of racial bias in the community with the challenged voting scheme.
The bills that ultimately became HB 1355 were amended several times during the legislative process, often by means of ‘strike-all’ amendments. But several witnesses who are familiar with the standard procedures in the Florida legislature testified that such strike-all amendments are not necessarily unusual in Florida. In addition, the record of the debates on HB 1355 reveals that the legislative process unfolded over a period of several months, and involved substantial testimony from a number of Florida election officials and members of the general public. The record contains several examples of Florida voting laws passed in recent years that were enacted to take immediate effect.
at least one permutation of the early voting changes would result in retrogression. In particular, we conclude that Florida has failed to meet its burden of showing that retrogression would not occur if the covered counties not only reduced the number of early voting days from 12 to 8 as required by the new law, but also reduced their total early voting hours from 96 to 48 (regardless of the specific hours chosen).
*1254 the record evidence suggests that GOTV groups could adjust to a redistribution of the total 96 hours over a different number of days, including weekend days and a ‘souls-to-the-polls' Sunday.... Expanding convenient non-working weekday and weekend voting hours should ... help third-party efforts to provide transportation to the polls for such voters.
[c]onsider the fact that many states do not engage in any form of early voting. Following Plaintiffs' theory to its next logical step, it would seem that if a state with a higher percentage of registered African–American voters than Florida did not implement an early voting program a Section 2 violation would occur because African–American voters in that state would have less of an opportunity to vote than voters in Florida. It would also follow that a Section 2 violation could occur in Florida if a state with a lower percentage of African–American voters employed an early voting system ... that lasts three weeks instead of the two week system currently used in Florida. This simply cannot be the standard for establishing a Section 2 violation.
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