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All Voters Vote

We are Florida voters who believe that every voter should have the right to cast a meaningful ballot. That is why we support the All Voters Vote initiative. Current Florida law prohibits most voters from voting in the elections that will determine who serves in our legislature, cabinet, and as our governor. With taxpayer funded closed partisan primaries in highly gerrymandered districts, the vast majority of Florida voters are currently prohibited from voting in important elections, and Florida is one of only 9 states with a closed partisan primaries. Millions of voters pay taxes to run elections in which they cannot vote. How is that fair. We believe that for the future of our state, we must change that. We believe that ALL voters should be allowed to vote. That is why we support elections that not only allow, but also encourage, ALL VOTERS to vote regardless of political or party affiliation. Allowing ALL registered voters the chance to vote in primary elections will help make our government more responsive to the people.

@AllVotersVote
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/All-Voters-Vote-508027812679453/

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Neil Volz (left) and Lance Wissinger are among the Florida felons who may need to pay fines before voting. But according to research by American Oversight, the state may not be able to track who owes money and how much they owe.

If payments are required for voting, Florida should know what felons owe. It doesn't.

Silvester is on the communications staff of American Oversight, a progressive ethics watchdog group.

Despite a federal court ruling it is unconstitutional to bar people with prior felony convictions from voting if they cannot pay off their legal fees, most formerly incarcerated Floridians were excluded from this year's presidential primary.

After nearly two-thirds of Florida's voters approved a 2018 ballot measure to restore voting rights to 1.4 million formerly incarcerated citizens, the Republican-run Legislature wrote a law requiring them to first pay all their court-imposed fines, fees and restitution.

The resulting legal battle — between what the voters want and what the politicians in charge in Tallahassee want — may last beyond the presidential election, when the state's 29 votes are the third biggest Electoral College prize. All the while, what the state actually knows about which felons owe what remains a surprisingly big mystery.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced New York's primary would be postponed until June due to the coronavirus.

Virus alters more election rules, starting in New York

The state at the epicenter of the American coronavirus pandemic is now positioned to be the final big prize in the Democratic presidential race.

New York on Saturday became the 11th and by far the biggest state to postpone primaries during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak. Such delays are just one example of the broad array of ways states are responding to the historic public health emergency.

Also over the weekend, a push intensified in the biggest battleground state, Florida, to expand voting by mail in time for November. One judge was pressed to ease the Arkansas absentee voting deadline, while another judge made it temporarily easier to get on the ballot with petitions in Virginia. But the obvious problems gathering signatures during mandatory social distancing prompted the end of a ballot referendum drive in Arizona.

Here are the latest developments:

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Florida primary voters went to the polls on March 17. Two volunteers working in Hollywood that day have since tested positive for the coronavirus.

Lawsuits, easements and diagnoses: updates from the nexus of elections and coronavirus

Advocates for making the coronavirus pandemic the time for changing American voting habits are taking heart there won't be any polling places for three of the next four Democratic presidential contests.

Voting in Alaska and Hawaii will now join Wyoming's caucuses in being conducted entirely remotely, among the latest wave of changes in the world of elections during a historic public health emergency.

While several states moved to make voting easier, Wisconsin pressed ahead with plans for a traditional primary April 7 and has now been confronted by four federal lawsuits hoping to force changes. And Florida reported the first known cases of poll workers subsequently testing positive for coronavirus.

Here are the latest developments:

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Students move out of their dorm at the University of Michigan as schools across the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Virus threatens a long-anticipated surge in student voting

College students were once hailed as a crucial voting bloc in 2020, but their momentum may be halted by the coronavirus pandemic that has shuttered campuses from coast to coast.

Registration drives, absentee ballot parties, political forums and new voter trainings are all on hold. Students are scrambling to chase down absentee ballot forms that were mailed to campuses but must now be forwarded to a home or other address. Newly designated campus polling places will stand empty for the remaining primaries, several of which have been delayed in any case. And students who return this fall will have little time to prepare for Election Day.

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