Democrats sue to further extend voter registration due to Hurricane Michael
Democrats sued the Florida secretary of state to keep voter registration open another week past Tuesday’s deadline due to the effects of Hurricane Michael.
Gov. Rick Scott has declared an emergency for 35 counties along the Gulf Coast, and many state offices are closed today in those counties.
Secretary of State Ken Detzner had already waived the deadline to vote in the counties where elections offices will be closed Tuesday, saying that elections supervisors will to accept paper voter-registration applications on the day that their offices reopen.
But Florida Democrats filed a complaint in U.S. District Court claiming thousands of eligible voters would be disenfranchised if the deadline is not fully extended by one week.
“Although the Secretary has proposed a single-day registration extension in some counties to accommodate a subset of voters affected by Hurricane Michael, his ‘solution’ is insufficient and confusing,” the complaint states. “It does not adequately protect the voting rights of Florida citizens who cannot register to vote by the October 9 registration deadline.”
The lawsuit claims voters “will face significant hurdles to registration because of the disruption caused by Hurricane Michael. Voters attempting to register online may face internet outages due to the storm.”
Before the state made the decision to extend the deadline, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for governor, urged him to do so, even though the Panhandle is a bastion of GOP votes.
“These are not parts of the state that I’m necessarily expected to do well,” Gillum said Monday. “But I do think we ought to do everything we can to extend registration to folks especially given the fact that most people are trying to scurry away from these areas they’re not thinking of voter registration.’’
A similar legal tussle over the voter registration deadline happened in 2016, when a federal judge extended the deadline by one week in light of Hurricane Matthew’s impact.
In a statement, Florida GOP chair Blaise Ingoglia said the lawsuit was “absolutely reprehensible” and that Democrats were playing “political games on the eve of a potentially devastating hurricane.”
“Only an organization that is playing politics with people's lives would ask for voter registration to be extended by a full week in this state’s most densely populated Democrat areas, almost nine hours and a time zone away,” Ingoglia said.
The online registration deadline remained at midnight Tuesday — technically 11:59 p.m.
But voting rights advocate Samuel Sinyangwe on Monday night noted on Twitter that there were problems with the system.
A department spokeswoman told Politico that the issue was fixed but acknowledged “some users were experiencing intermittent issues while others had no problems.”