From The News Service of Florida:
With a federal judge poised to hear arguments in a related case, the League of Women Voters of Florida on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to force Florida to extend voter registration until Oct. 18.
The League of Women Voters also asked to take part in arguments Wednesday morning at the same time as the other case, filed Sunday by the Florida Democratic Party. The cases stem from Hurricane Matthew, which slammed into parts of the state late last week, forcing residents to flee and closing government offices.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Monday ordered that the voter-registration deadline for the Nov. 8 election be extended from Tuesday to Wednesday and also scheduled a hearing Wednesday morning to consider a further extension. The ruling came after Gov. Rick Scott’s administration balked at extending the registration deadline.
The League of Women Voters contended in a court document that an extension until Oct. 18 is needed to avoid disenfranchising voters and that failure to do so would violate a law known as the National Voter Registration Act.
“The NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) protects the right of eligible voters to register, and have their registrations be counted — in the entire period for which registration activity normally occurs — up to 30 days before an election,” lawyers for the League of Women Voters wrote in a memorandum of law.
“Yet, across large swaths of Florida, eligible voters who planned to register during the past week, whether in person or by mail, were unable to do so due to circumstances far beyond their control. For at least five days, it was virtually impossible for Floridians along the Matthew-battered coast to register to vote during the statutorily-entitled timeframe. Florida cannot disenfranchise voters who relied on the right, protected by federal law, to register up to 30 days before the presidential election simply because a sudden and unexpected natural disaster made doing so impossible.”
Meanwhile Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida also sought to intervene in the Democratic Party case on behalf of the voting-rights organizations New Florida Majority and Mi Familia Vota.