On June 25, the 11th circuit upheld Florida’s ban on asking voters to sign a petition (on election day) within 100 feet of a polling place. Citizens for Police Accountability Political Committee v Browning, 08-15115. The opinion is 17 pages. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
Testing.
Oh good, I am able to comment again. It must have been the computer that caused me to not be able to comment.
The decision is not logical. Florida permits exit pollsters within 100 feet of the polling place. Both petitioning, and exit polling, involve asking voters who have just voted to stop and fill out forms. But exit pollster questionaires typically involve 20 to 30 questions, and take most people 3 minutes to fill out. Having someone to sign a petition can take as little as 30 seconds. Florida, in effect, has said that the speech of exit pollsters deserves more constitutional protection than the speech of petition circulators.
“Richard Says:
June 26th, 2009 at 6:50 am
The decision is not logical.”
I totally agree. The other side claims that they want to prohibit petitioning at polling places because that is electioneering, but what they don’t seem to understand is that the petitions that people are asking other people to sign are for candidates and/or issues that are NOT even on the ballot for the election which is being voted upon, so therefore, no electioneering is taking place.
This is just another absurd regulation that is meant to make ballot access more difficult.
It is funny that at political party conventions there are people standing right next to eachother who support and push different candidates. Many of these people wear buttons and carry signs of different candidates. Nobody freaks out about “electioneering” in these places.
Petition signature gatherers ought to be able to petition near the door – or in some cases even inside – every polling place in the country, as long as they aren’t blocking people (as in they can be close to the door, just don’t block it).
It sould be noted that these distance regulations at polling places (such as 100 feet, or in some cases 200 feet) actually render many of them useless for petition signature gathering, because depending on the lay out of the venue, 100 feet or 200 feet or whatever can make it difficult or even impossible to ask people to sign petitions. This is a MAJOR hinderance to ballot access since polling places can been good locations for gathering petition signatures.
If I were soliciting signatures for an initiative instituting a minimum wage, would I be permitted to have a poster advocating a multi-pronged strategy:
1. Contact your legislator, including Rep. Bloggs who voted against the bill, and tell them you won’t vote for them if they don’t support the bill.
2. Sign the petition, in case the legislature, including Rep. Bloggs doesn’t act.
Or could a supporter for Rep. Bloggs set up outside the electioneering limit: Joe Sproggs favors a minimum wage, Rep. Bloggs voted NO. Vote for Sproggs. And be sure to sign the minimum wage petition and point out the petition solicitor up ahead.
Wisconsin debated this exact issue and reached the conclusion that it was not electioneering as long as it wasn’t related to the election on hand. This was codified in a formal opinion (El. Bd. 07-01).