League of Women Voters of Florida, Supported by the Priorities USA Foundation, Files Suit Against the Florida Secretary of State’s Efforts to Restrict Early Vote For Young Voters
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 22, 2018
League of Women Voters of Florida, Supported by the Priorities USA Foundation, Files Suit Against the Florida Secretary of State’s Efforts to Restrict Early Vote For Young Voters
Washington, DC — Supported by the Priorities USA Foundation, the League of Women Voters of Florida and seven young Florida voters today filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida challenging Secretary of State Kenneth Detzner’s contention that Florida law prohibits the use of public college and university campus facilities as early vote sites. In fact, the lawsuit argues, there is nothing in the law that explicitly prohibits this practice, and the result of Secretary Detzner’s misguided interpretation of the law is a disproportionate and unacceptable burden on the right to vote for hundreds of thousands of eligible Florida voters—particularly young people and college students.
The result of Secretary Detzner’s position is a burden on the right to vote that falls disproportionately on Florida’s young voters, who are particularly likely to live on or near a public college or university and who generally have less access to the reliable transportation they need to reach their closest early voting sites. Further, young voters are more likely to have demanding and inflexible school and work schedules that do not provide ample time to participate in early voting, especially if extensive travel is required to do so. The lawsuit being filed today argues that Detzner’s position violates the 1st, 14th and 26th Amendments to the United States Constitution.
“Florida’s young people deserve to have an equal voice in our civic life, and no elected official should be making it even more difficult for them to vote,” said Guy Cecil, Chairman of the Priorities USA Foundation. “By needlessly excluding public college and university buildings—and only these buildings—from Florida’s efforts to expand early voting, Secretary Detzner has forced young people to jump through logistical hoops just to cast a ballot. Priorities is committed to ensuring that in all future elections, young voters have ample opportunity to participate in the democratic process.”
“Since the tragedy in Parkland, droves of students have been registering to vote for the first time,” said Patricia Brigham, President of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “Not allowing them to cast their early votes on our college and university campuses sends the absolute wrong message. Is our Secretary of State actually trying to discourage these students from participating in their civic duty?”
The Priorities USA Foundation is committed to protecting the right to vote for every American. In 2017, the Priorities USA Foundation sponsored a lawsuit in New Hampshire challenging a law adding unnecessary hurdles to voter registration that specifically make it more difficult for young people and people who have recently moved into or within the state to vote, as well as a lawsuit in Indiana challenging a plan to reduce the number of voting sites in one of the state’s most heavily Hispanic and African-American counties.