Florida, Voter Suppression | featured news

People in Florida, Virginia and Indiana have gotten calls falsely telling them they can vote early by phone and don't need to go to a polling place. In suburban Broward County, Fla., a handful of elderly voters who requested absentee ballots say they were visited by unknown people claiming to be authorized to collecttheballots.

For LaVon Bracy, the pain of racial discrimination, of fighting for her rights as a U.S. citizen, still aches every time she thinks about Florida's new voter identification law. "When I think I had ancestors that died for this right. I owe it to them ... to do what I'm doing," said Bracy, who years ago helped desegregate her Florida high school and today is fighting to change voting restrictions she feels are designed to keep people like her away from the polls.

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a challenge to Florida's recent voter purge efforts, clearing the way for the removal of about 200 suspected non-U.S. citizens from state voter rolls before the November 6 presidential election.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is conducting an investigating of alleged fraud involving a company hired to register voters by the state's Republican Party.

...Mary Blackwell said the league's Okaloosa County chapter held a voter registration drive at a college campus in Niceville and that a person who was registering voters told her he was "lucky" he only had applications from Republicans or independents -- Blackwell said she was "distressed" by the comments and became worried that he may be discarding voter registration forms filled out by Democrats.