Students fight for early voting on campuses

By Sammi Sontag
INWEEKLY…

Six University of Florida students, backed by the League of Women Voters of Florida and The Andrew Goodman Foundation, have filed a lawsuit against the current interpretation of Florida’s early voting statue, which will go to court on July 16.

The group claims that Florida Secretary of State Kenneth Detzner interpretation of the statue is unjust and is creating a barrier for young voters.

Escambia County Supervisor of Elections David Stafford believes there needs to be more flexibility in early voting places.

“Florida offers early voting,” Stafford told Inweekly. “Many states don’t offer early voting at all. What my colleagues and I have publicly advocated for is that we, the supervisors of voting, get the same flexibility to choose polling locations on Election Day as have do for early voting.”

He continued, “We have situations in certain counties where there are no suitable (polling) locations that fit into the statures criteria. But that aside, Florida does offer robust opportunity for early voting.”

Early voting has been an integral tool for Florida elections throughout the years. It reduces voting lines on Election Day, lowers the workload on election officials and provides greater opportunity for constituents to vote.

The early voting interpretation was brought up in 2014. Detzner decided that Gainesville city officials could not use the University of Florida’s Reitz Student Union as an early voting location.

“The Secretary of State, when asked about the Gainesville area by one of my colleagues, ruled that the University didn’t fall into one of the categories listed in the Florida stature,” Stafford said.

The categories for early-voting sites include city hall, permanent public library facility, fairground, civic center, courthouse, county commission building, stadium, convention center, government-owned senior center or government-owned community center.

This created uneasiness for some students because Alachua County has only five early voting locations, one of which is a park. While each location is a substantial distance from the school’s campus, making it difficult for students who live on campus or are without a car, to vote early.

Escambia County is in a unique situation with one of its early-voting locations, the Genealogy Library on Pensacola State College’s campus.

“The Genealogy Library does sit on the physical campus of Pensacola State,” Stafford said. “But because it is a part of the West Florida Public Library system, it’s not technically the college’s Library.”

Pensacola will have eight early-voting locations in this election cycle, so the county will have one polling site for every 25,000 voters. This is a slight change compared to the last election cycle, which Stafford hopes will encourage more people to vote.

The new interpretation of Florida Statutes 101.657 (Early Voting) might seem like a slap on the wrist to college voters, but Stafford reminds voters that mailing in a ballot is a good option.

“Yes, college campuses are not explicitly listed,” he said. “And you can question why the legislature did this and use your own judgment as to as to whether or not there’s a specific intention because I have absolutely no idea, but I think you’ll start to see more people choose to vote by mail.”