The Tampa Tribune criticized ACORN in an opinion piece that ran on Saturday July 19th for putting Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning on notice that the state of Florida was not in compliance with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. According to the act, voter registration assistance must be provided not only at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) but at all agencies that provide public assistance (such as Medicaid and food stamps). A recent study released by Project Vote, ACORN, and Demos showed that Florida’s percentage of registrations from public-assistance agencies dropped from 9% in 1995 and 1.8% in 2007.
Instead of calling for the state to comply with the Federal law, an action most citizens can find little fault with, – after all, Americans pride themselves on living in a nation built on laws – the Tribune launches into a litany of excuses for illegal behavior.
The paper defends the state, saying that it is already doing all it can through the DMV to register voters and calling ACORN’s description of the state’s illegal behavior a civil rights issue “nonsense”.
This characterization is itself nothing but nonsense clumsily camouflaged behind a disingenuous and contextless statistic regarding the number of Floridians receiving cash assistance and a hilariously ironic reference to community-based voter registration drives.
First, let us tediously remind our good friends on the Tampa Tribune editorial board that Section 7 of the NVRA requires all public assistance agencies, not just those handing out cash assistance, to be responsible, like those exemplary DMV employees, for offering clients the opportunity to register. If the DMV can keep a steady stream of applications rolling in, one wonders why the folks administering the Medicaid program, a program not counted as “cash assistance”, can’t do that same.
Second, while it is true that Project Vote and ACORN have been at the forefront of assisting low-income families register to vote in Florida, it is also true that even at their most efficient and wide-spread these drives reach only a fraction of Florida’s unregistered voters. For example, in 2006 Florida had over 4.2 million eligible unregistered voters according to Project Vote’s 2007 report on the 2006 electorate called Representational Bias. In 2004, over the course of the state’s largest voter registration drive ever, ACORN assisted just over 200,000 voters register to vote. By simply following the law, Florida could register far more voters than most voter registration drives combined.
But getting into a back-and-forth over the exact number of folks who have been affected by Florida’s disregard of the law obscures a fact that should be obvious to even the Tribune’s editorial board: Florida’s actions are illegal whether they’ve failed to offer registration opportunities to one voter or to 100,000. The fact that the editorial board of any newspaper, let alone one of the largest in the Sunshine State, would, in the 21st century, condone and defend illegal activities related to the enforcement of civil rights laws is, quite frankly, shocking.
We can only hope that once an enforcement action is filed the judges reviewing the case show a greater understanding than does the Tampa Tribune of the difference between following the law and flouting it.
Contact Information:
Tampa Tribune:
Tampa Bay Online Office:
813-259-8225 or 1-800-527-2773
Loren Omoto, Director of Content
lomoto@tbo.comClick here to write a letter to the Tampa Tribune editor
Kurt Browning:
Secretary of State
Florida Department of State
R. A. Gray Building
500 South Bronough Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250Telephone: 850.245.6500
Fax: 850.245.6125
secretaryofstate@dos.state.fl.us