I often write about how Florida will do whatever it needs to do to keep charter schools open (close a failing school – rename it and open it somewhere else). Florida is back in the news again as the state was trying to keep college students from voting.
Here are a few facts to provide context. Just over one million students attend a college or university in the state. Of that number, 838,000 attend a public college or uiversity. In the 2016 election 2.4 million people under the age of 30 were registered to vote. This comprises about 25% of the total number of people (9.5 million) who voted in the election (cloudup.com).
Also in 2016, 3.9 million people of all ages (approximately 40% of the total number of people who voted) chose to vote early in the election (cloudup.com).
The Division of Elections in Florida defines appropriate voting sites as a “government owned community centers or convention centers” (cloudup.com). In January 2014, a group of University of Florida (UF) students approached the Division of Elections to ask whether a student union on their UF campus could be considered as an early voting center. Students found many hardships of traveling from their campus to voting centers and wanted to make it easier to vote early. The decision handed down from the Division of Elections was that a campus student union is a stucture designed for and affiliated with a specific educational institution, thus excluding it from being designated as an early voting site.
So they sued. The plaintiffs in the case were six Florida college students, the League of Women Voters, and the Andrew Goodman Foundation. They were suing for the right to have voting sites on their campuses.
The 26th amendment says, “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age”(constitut ion.laws.com).
This week the decision was handed down by US District Judge Mark Walker.
The judge saw a severe burden imposed by the secretary of state’s 2014 opinion — not the mere inconvenience of students having to take a bus or reschedule plans to vote. He argued it created a secondary class of citizens. Early voting may be a convenience, he wrote, but constitutional problems arise when conveniences are available for some groups of people but blocked for others.
The ruling allows college campuses the “discretion in setting sites at public universities” but doesn’t impose early voting centers on public campuses (Washington Post).
In his ruling, Walker said the 2014 decision “reveals a stark pattern of discrimination because it so directly bears on young voters, comparing it to past efforts to limit voters based on their race.
The judge saw a severe burden imposed by the secretary of state’s opinion — not the mere inconvenience of students having to take a bus or reschedule plans to vote. He argued it created a secondary class of citizens. Early voting may be a convenience, he wrote, but constitutional problems arise when conveniences are available for some groups of people but blocked for others (Washington Post).
Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post said, “What’s new is that here the court actually found that the Florida policy was in fact intended to make it harder for college students to vote, and struck it down on those lines.
The president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, Patricia Brigham, said the decision comes at a time when young people, especially in Florida, are more interested in voting – a likely result of the school shooting in Parkland. Brigham said, “We should be making it easier to vote, not harder” (Washington Post).
With this decision, it will be easier for college students to exercise their constitutional right to vote. And there are a lot of them. Perhaps that’s why the Division of Elections doesn’t want young people voting.
These are my reflections for today.
8/3/18
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