TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – In response to the Florida legislature passing HB 991, also known as the Florida SAVE Act, League of Women Voters of Florida President Jessica Lowe-Minor issued the following statement:
“HB 991 makes voting harder for eligible Americans. It ties the right to vote to possession of costly documents that many U.S. citizens don’t have easy access to, making it highly likely that eligible Floridians will be removed from the voter rolls purely due to red tape.
“Many U.S. citizens living in Florida do not possess a Florida drivers license or identification card. These eligible voters are not part of the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) database, and the Florida SAVE Act places an undue burden on these voters by requiring them to track down and submit costly, hard to get documentation.
“Within our own organization, we have heard from a League member who is struggling to get a state-issued ID for her elderly mother here in Florida because her mother had been married multiple times and they couldn’t find all of the right forms from the midwest state where she was relocating from to attest to her multiple name changes. So, even though she is a lifelong U.S. citizen and a new Florida resident, she still doesn’t have a FHSMV ID. This law, if signed by the Governor, would put her ability to vote at risk.
“This legislation assumes voters have easy access to original and/or certified documents, but research conducted in 2023 by the Brennan Center for Justice indicates that more than 9% of American citizens of voting age don’t have their proof of citizenship readily available. Only half of Americans have a passport, and a majority of married women are unlikely to have a birth certificate in their current legal name.
“Nine percent of Florida’s Citizen Voting Age Population is approximately 1.4 million people, so the League expects that many eligible voters will be impacted by this overly broad law.
“Additionally, the bill changes the list of photo identification options that voters can use at the polling place on Election Day, eliminating student IDs, retirement center and neighborhood IDs, as well as public assistance IDs. We expect that these changes will create a lot of unnecessary confusion and frustration for voters.
“Given how secure Florida’s elections already are, this law is a bad solution in search of a problem, and it undermines the promise of a free and fair democracy.”
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CONTACT
Joey Arellano