Florida: 11th Circuit hears argument on SSN-matching
AP reports: Tens of thousands of Floridians will be barred from voting in the 2008 national election if a state voter registration law is allowed to go back into effect, lawyers for minority groups said Friday.
In a hearing before a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, lawyers for the Florida NAACP and other groups asked that a temporary injunction against the 2005 law stay in place.
The law requires that information on voter applications match driver's license or Social Security card databases. Florida officials - still haunted by the election of 2000 - say the law is a centerpiece of their efforts to prevent fraud and restore public confidence in the electoral process.
But the law created a system in which a simple mistake on a voter registration application can knock would-be voters out of an election, even if the present a valid driver's license or passport.
"If the injunction is not upheld and if the law is allowed to take effect, tens of thousands of Florida residents will be denied their right to vote because of a typo," said Justin Levitt, the New York-based lawyer arguing on behalf of the Florida NAACP and its co-plainitffs. --