Battling Across the Finish Line: Florida and Colorado Move Toward Approval of Reform Bills

[Image courtesy of geektyrant]

Last week, two states with sweeping election reform bills moved closer to enacting them into law – and in both cases it was a battle to the end.

In Florida, legislators enacted a bill that would expand early voting up to 14 days before Election Day – and widen the types of locations where such voting can occur – though Democrats were unhappy that the decision of how many days to offer would be left to the discretion of local officials:

Florida election supervisors will be allowed to restore early voting up to 14 days — including the last Sunday before Election Day — and increase the kinds of locations sanctioned for early-voting, under a bill passed by the Legislature in its final hours of session Friday.

HB 7013 reverses much of the changes by the Republican-led Legislature in 2011 that limited early voting down to eight days …

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho welcomed the restoration of early-voting times and the ability to add early voting at locations such as community centers, fairgrounds and civic centers. Elections supervisors also would be permitted to choose one other non-governmental voting location.

“It gives us the flexibility to actually deal with accommodating the voters,” Sancho said. “It’s the best bill we can expect the Florida Legislature to pass at this time.”

Some Democrats expressed reservations about the bill because they said it didn’t go far enough and should have required the 14 early voting days rather than leaving it up to individual supervisors. But in the end, lawmakers conceded it was better to “reset the clock,” taking a less-than-perfect bill now and pushing for more improvements in the future.

The last remaining sticking point on the legislation was removed last Friday, when the legislature abandoned plans to allow the Governor to sanction local election officials for non-compliance with state law. That provision had drawn fierce bipartisan opposition from the state’s county election officials.

In Colorado, another wide-ranging election bill passed the State Senate on a party-line vote after some nasty debates that suggest the fight will continue:

The Colorado Senate passed a bill Thursday that would provide a ballot by mail to every state voter, allow vote centers for those who choose not to use the mail ballot and — controversially — allow people to register and vote on Election Day.

The bill passed 20-15 with the full support of Democrats and no Republican votes. The bill passed the House on a party-line vote last month.

Before it can go to Gov. John Hickenlooper for a signature to become the new way elections are held in Colorado, the bill must return to the House for approval because of “technical” amendments added in the Senate.

While legislators in both parties liked the convenience of more by-mail voting, Election Day registration was the grist for the oratory mill.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said the bill, called the “Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act” by supporters, should instead be called the “Same Day Voter Fraud Act.”

As I’ve noted before, the most interesting facet of the Colorado debate is the standoff between Secretary of State Scott Gessler and the state’s election clerks – many of whom, like Gessler, are Republican – who are largely behind the bill. That appears to matter little in the legislature, where position-taking on the bill has taken on familiar partisan overtones:

Sen. Angela Giron, D-Pueblo and a sponsor of the bill, said she didn’t understand why all Republicans in the Senate and House opposed the bill that was supported by 75 percent of the state’s 64 county clerks.

Sixty-two percent of those clerks are Republican, she said.

Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, said numerous other states have same-day voting, some for as long as 40 years, and elections there haven’t destroyed democracy.

Regardless, Republican senators continued to argue the bill would delegitimize the state’s elections, saying they would become like those held in Iran, Venezuel and “banana republics.”

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, said same-day registrations invite people to vote more than once, and that could change the outcome of races.

“When elections are stolen in that manner, it calls into question the integrity of the electoral process,” Brophy said. “That authority to govern … is the foundation of a republican form of government, and this bill calls that into question. It turns us into a banana republic.”

The House is scheduled to approve the bill this week and then it will go to the Governor; it should be very interesting to see if Colorado (like Florida) manages to battle across the finish line or if the current cross-fire in the Legislature is enough to sink the bill for now.

Stay tuned …