UF professor to testify on Fla. election law, voting rights before U.S. Senate subcommittee
GAINESVILLE — University of Florida political science professor Daniel A. Smith will testify Friday before several U.S. senators about Florida’s new voting law.
Smith was invited to the hearing by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights.
The hearing, to be held in Tampa, will examine a Florida law that limits the time available for early voting, makes it more difficult for volunteer organizations to register voters and changes the cause for voters to cast provisional ballots.
Smith was selected by U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s office to “speak from an academic viewpoint, not an activist’s,” Smith said. Smith was chosen as a witness because of his work on Florida election law and voting behavior.
Smith’s testimony will look at three features of the new law and how they potentially limit voting rights of Floridians.
“The first is early voting. The new Florida law truncates the early voting period from a 14-day window to an eight-day window, and most importantly, it eliminates the final Sunday before Election Day,” Smith said.
“The second area is the impact of the law on voter registration efforts by groups wishing to register voters,” he said. The new law has forced groups such as the League of Women Voters to stop their voter registration efforts because penalties for possible violations are too high, he said.
The third feature deals with provisional ballots, which are required to be cast when a registered voter moves from one county to another, or even within a county. According to Smith, the new law will likely increase the number of provisional ballots that are cast. In the last presidential election, Smith said, a large proportion of provisional ballots were not counted. With the new law, Smith thinks that it is possible that even more provisional ballots will go uncounted.
Smith and Michael Herron, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, matched the voter file from the 2008 general election with the early voting file from that election, identifying trends such as which ethnic, racial, gender, or age groups were more likely to vote early in 2008, and how the new law likely will affect them.
Smith said they found African-American, Hispanic, youth, and first-time voters were much more likely to vote on the Sunday before the election.
The U.S. Senate hearing should bring attention to the impact that voting and election laws like Florida’s will have on citizens, especially with respect to ethnic and racial minorities, Smith said.