A federal district judge has denied motions by civil rights groups that charged Florida failed to take reasonable precautions to ensure residents affected by the coronavirus crisis could vote in last week’s presidential primary.
A number of groups, including LatinoJustice PRLDEF and New Florida Majority, filed a lawsuit the day before the March 17 election alleging that several plaintiffs had been disenfranchised from voting. They included elderly voters who didn’t want to risk getting infected at a polling place and a woman who had just returned from an international trip and was in self-isolation.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle denied the groups’ request for a restraining order and preliminary injunctions to force Gov. Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Laurel Lee to take immediate actions, such as extending deadlines for requesting and returning mail-in ballots, allowing curbside voting and sending some ballots by fax or email.
But Hinkle did not rule out the possibility of the state taking post-election measures to maximize voting opportunities, and a hearing dealing with issues brought up in the lawsuit has been set for July 28.
Mark Ard, spokesman for the Department of State’s Office, told the Florida Record that voters had multiple options to cast ballots during the presidential primary election and that Lee had kept voters apprised of efforts to make polling places safe and secure during press conferences held by the governor.
“In Florida, voters have several options to exercise their right to vote, including in advance of election day: vote by mail, early voting and voting at the polls on election day,” Ard said in an email. “Supervisors of elections began sending vote-by-mail ballots to voters for the Presidential Preference Primary since at least Feb. 1.”
Lee said in an emailed statement to the Record that her department would closely examine all the conditions that will affect future elections, including the Aug. 18 primary for national, state, county and district offices, and the November general election.
“We … are monitoring the coronavirus pandemic, and we will recommend any appropriate accommodations or decisions as we move closer to the election dates and understand more about the ongoing impact to the state,” she said.
Voters would continue to have multiple methods to cast their ballots in the upcoming elections, according to Lee.
“Voters are encouraged to utilize the many resources available,” she said, “including online voter registration, requesting vote-by-mail ballots and contacting their local supervisor of elections about upcoming election dates, including municipal elections.”
During a press conference with DeSantis a day before the primary election, Lee said those who were following federal health officials’ guidelines and were self-isolating did have an option to cast their ballots.
“If a voter has been ordered to self-isolate or is experiencing symptoms of Covid-19 and has not yet voted, they should designate someone to pick up their vote-by-mail ballot for them," she said.
Voting by that method, however, requires the voter to fill out a vote-by-mail delivery affidavit, and that’s a requirement the federal lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Florida sought to waive in the wake of the coronavirus situation.
“Tuesday’s election was fraught with confusion, misinformation and fear,” the coalition of civil rights groups said in a joint statement prior to the vote. “The evidence so far is that election day turnout will be low, and thousands of voters were disenfranchised despite record numbers of voters who voted early and by mail.”
In addition, scores of polling sites were closed or consolidated because workers failed to show up, the groups said.
And reports that two Broward County election workers have tested positive for coronavirus this week have heightened the seriousness about the allegations brought up in the lawsuit, according to managing attorney Kira Romero-Craft at LatinoJustice’s Southeast Office.
“It talks to the fact that we’re dealing with something we were ill-prepared to imagine or think about how it would affect the election,” Romero-Craft told the Record.
The way to ensure all voters have adequate opportunities to cast their ballots is not through a single solution, such as a shift to all-mail voting, she said.
“We know, for example, that in Native American communities, it’s difficult for them to receive mail and get to the post office to even have the mail sent back,” Romero-Craft said. She added that in some Latino communities, there is a high level distrust that a mailed-in ballot would be counted.
Some positive options could include drop boxes for returning mail-in ballots, curbside voting with paper ballots and having ballots emailed to voters, she said.
Although neither the Governor’s Office nor the Department of State has communicated with the civil rights groups about their concerns, the groups say they will continue to work for greater voting options since there is no guarantee that the coronavirus threat would be over by August or November.
“I think that this is not an issue we are going to let up on,” Romero-Craft said. “... It is a harrowing situation. Everything points to the fact that we were ill-prepared to deal with this crisis.”