Posted on Fri, Oct. 22, 2004
Federal judge may rule today on rejected voter applications
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@herald.com
A Miami federal judge might decide today whether to allow more than 14,000 Floridians can vote in the upcoming election even though their voter registration applications were not properly filled out.
U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King could issue his decision late this afternoon after hearing arguments from voting rights groups and labor unions that have filed a lawsuit seeking to have the rejected applicants declared eligible for the Nov. 2 general election.
Florida's Secretary of State and election supervisors in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange and Duval counties have urged the judge to dismiss the suit, which was filed last week after the Oct. 4 voter registration deadline.
Thousands of people -- including African-Americans and Hispanics -- say their voter registration forms were illegally rejected because they did not check off boxes for U.S. citizenship, felony status or mental capacity and did not provide an identification number, according to the suit.
They claim that state and county election officials chose not to accept them because ``they have adopted unduly restrictive registration practices and procedures that violate federal and state laws.''
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9988121.htm(Free registration is required)