Florida won’t challenge ruling that will allow early voting on college campuses

TALLAHASSEE — Secretary of State Ken Detzner has told a federal judge the state will comply with an order that struck down a policy barring early voting sites on college and university campuses.

But elections supervisors in Alachua, Leon and Hillsborough counties say it’s too late to secure early voting sites before the Aug. 28 primaries — and they’re not sure whether they can nail down on-campus sites before the Nov. 6 general election.

The issue stems from a 2014 advisory opinion by state Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews that advised elections supervisors that a 2013 law expanding early voting sites to a variety of public facilities didn’t apply to college or university locales.

The League of Women Voters of Florida, the Andrew Goodman Foundation and six University of Florida and Florida State University students filed a lawsuit challenging the prohibition this year.

Siding with the students and the voting-rights groups, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker last week found that the Department of State’s ban against campus early-voting sites “is facially discriminatory on account of age,” and that it “imposes significant burdens on plaintiffs’ rights weighted against imprecise, insufficiently weighty government interests.”

Detzner filed a notice with the court Friday saying the state would comply with the order — a departure from other longrunning battles between Gov. Rick Scott’s administration and Walker, who has repeatedly ruled against the state in opinions that have scorched policies advanced by Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature.

The memo also rescinded the 2014 directive, which involved a question on whether the University of Florida’s J. Wayne Reitz Union was an eligible early voting facility

The elections supervisors said Wednesday that they are all in talks with university or college presidents in an attempt to secure sites for the fall election, but nothing had been finalized.

Part of the problem with the on-campus sites is parking, which can already be nightmarish even without an added influx of voters who may not teach, work or attend school at the universities, the supervisors said.

“The issue is the early voting for the general election is for two weeks,” Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton said. “You’ve got to have access for anyone who wants to come on campus. It can’t be just for students. So we’ve got to have parking spaces for people.”

She said she is in talks with UF officials in hopes of securing a site before November. Another kink, she said, is that the university’s football team has a home game Nov. 3, the last day of early voting.

“It may not work at the Reitz Union,” Barton said. “It may have to be at another building on campus.”