Jacksonville Coalition for Voter Protection v. Hood

351 F. Supp. 2d 1326, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26522, 2004 WL 3088633
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Florida
DecidedOctober 25, 2004
DocketNo. 3:04CV1123-J-20-MMH
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 351 F. Supp. 2d 1326 (Jacksonville Coalition for Voter Protection v. Hood) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jacksonville Coalition for Voter Protection v. Hood, 351 F. Supp. 2d 1326, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26522, 2004 WL 3088633 (M.D. Fla. 2004).

Opinion

ORDER

SCHLESINGER, District Judge.

Before the Court is Plaintiffs’ Verified Complaint for Preliminary and Permanent Injunctive and Declaratory Relief (Doc. No. 1, filed October 19.2004) and Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction and for Expedited Hearing (Doc. No. 3, filed October 20, 2004). Defendants Scheu and Carlberg have filed a Response to Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion (Doc. No. 9, filed October 22, 2004). Because of the exigent circumstances, the Court held a hearing on the Emergency Motion on Friday, October 22, 2004. All Parties were represented at the hearing, and the Court appreciates the lawyers preparing their presentations on such short notice.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

There can be little disagreement that the election system in Florida suffered numerous attacks in the wake of the 2000 election. For example, the United States Commission on Civil Rights estimated that the rate of rejection for votes cast by African-American voters in Duval County was 23.6 percent, compared to a 5.5 percent rejection rate for non-African-American voters. In sum, the Commission majority concluded that many Floridian voters had been denied their right to vote and that this disenfranchisement disproportionately affected African-American voters. While there was a dissenting portion of that report, the underlying reason that caused voters to improperly cast their votes and then have those votes rejected (for example, over voting for more than one candidate for an office) is not explained in either portion of the report. In part as a response to the problems encountered by many voters in 2000, the Florida legislature amended the Early Voting Statute, Florida Statutes, section 101.657(l)(a) (2004). which states:

The supervisor of elections shall allow an elector to vote early in the main or branch office of the supervisor by depositing the voted ballot in a voting device used by the supervisor to collect or tabulate ballots. In order for a branch [1329]*1329office to be used for early voting, it shall be a full-service facility of the supervisor and shall have been designated as such at least 1 year prior to the election. The supervisor may designate any city hall or public library as early voting sites; however, if so designated, the sites must be geographically located so as to provide all voters in the county an equal opportunity to cast a ballot, insofar as is practicable. The results or tabulation may not be made before the close of the polls on election day.

While many Americans are familiar with the use of absentee ballots by those who are ill, out of town, or otherwise unable to get to the polls on election day, fewer Americans are aware of early voting programs. The Court has ascertained that approximately thirty states currently allow some form of early voting. CNN. America Votes 2004-Early Voting States. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ (accessed October 24, 2004). These states utilize early voting either by mail, in person, or a combination of the two. The length of time early voting is available in each state varies widely, from Idaho where early voting began September 14 to Oklahoma where early votes cannot be cast until October 29. The majority of states involved in early voting opened the voting between October 4 and October 18. Id. In this election cycle, Florida’s early voting began October 18 and runs until November 1. Fla. Stat. § 101.657(l)(b).

The early voting system, as implemented in Duval County, allows a registered voter to cast a vote at any of the demarcated early voting sites as opposed to having to cast the vote only at the assigned voting precinct on election day. As will be discussed below, voters’ ability to vote at any of the early polling sites requires that the computers used at these sites' be capable of accepting votes directed to any of the 285 voting precincts in Duval County. This type of programming is different than the programming required of election-day computers. Election-day computers must be programmed in such a way that the computers at each voting precinct are capable of accepting ballots from voters assigned only to that voting precinct. From the testimony delivered at the October 22 hearing (which will be commented on below), it seems that entirely different computer programs are required for use at early polling sites as opposed to at voting precinct sites on election day.

Turning back to the circumstances leading up to the filing of this case, the Supervisor of Elections Office in Duval County, based on section 101.657, announced that there would be one early voting site — the Supervisor of Elections Office in downtown Jacksonville. The Supervisor of Elections in Duval County only has one office, the main office, and has no branch offices. After learning that there was to be only one early voting site, members of the community, including individual Plaintiffs, and representatives of Plaintiffs’ organizations, began discussions, with representatives of the Elections Office in hopes of convincing them to open more early voting sites. When such discussions were unsuccessful, many of these persons took the opportunity to speak to the City Council, especially at the City Council’s meeting on October 13, 2004. Because lack of funding for the extra sites was raised as one of the reasons for not having the additional early voting sites, the City Council authorized the sum of $100,000 for partial funding of the four additional early voting sites at county libraries in Duval County. Thereafter, the Mayor of Jacksonville authorized the expenditure of $100,000 matching funds to provide all that was necessary to the opening of the four proposed sites. The proposed additional sites named were Bradham Brooks Northwest Regional Library, Regency Square Regional Library, [1330]*1330Southeast Regional Library, and Willow-branch Library.

Nonetheless, Defendant Carlberg,1 Assistant Supervisor of Elections, refused to open the suggested four additional early polling sites stating concerns over security, personnel, and infrastructure. During this same general time period, the Governor of Florida and Florida’s Secretary of State both publically encouraged the Duval County Elections Office to open more early polling sites. Thereafter, on Wednesday, October 20, 2004, the newly appointed interim Supervisor of Elections. William Scheu, announced that four additional sites would be operational by Saturday, October 23, 2004.

Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction argues that “African Americans in Duval County have less opportunity than other members of the state’s electorate to vote in the upcoming election.” (Doc. No. 3, pg. 3.) Their claim is based on the fact that Duval County has the largest percentage of African-American registered voters of any major county in the state, and, yet, other similarly-sized counties with smaller African-American registered voter percentages have more early voting sites. Based on this, Plaintiffs argue that African-American voters in Duval County are disproportionally affected and, therefore, that the County’s implementation of early voting procedures violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973.

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Related

North Carolina State Conference of NAACP v. McCrory
182 F. Supp. 3d 320 (M.D. North Carolina, 2016)
JACKSONVILLE COALITION FOR VOTER PROTECT. v. Hood
351 F. Supp. 2d 1326 (M.D. Florida, 2004)

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Bluebook (online)
351 F. Supp. 2d 1326, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26522, 2004 WL 3088633, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jacksonville-coalition-for-voter-protection-v-hood-flmd-2004.