More than 300 Southwest Miami High School students register to vote on May 30 in the school auditorium. Photo by Ethan Magoc/News21
Two South Florida groups targeting student voter registration are giving reserved reviews to a May 31 decision by a federal judge to place a hold on a 48-hour deadline for turning in registration forms.
Jacquie Ayala, left, of Southern Energy Network, a third-party voter registrant, talks with Christina Jean, 19, of Lake Worth, Fla., on the campus of Florida Atlantic University on May 30. Photo by Ethan Magoc/News21.
John Doyle is an administrative director for Miami-Dade Public Schools, where the 2011 registration regulations were taken one step further.
“We had a self-imposed 24-hour turnaround, just to avoid any problems,” he said. “As an individual person, citizen and voter, I definitely have opinions about the 48-hour rule. But the court’s decision moving forward doesn’t matter to us administratively.”
At the college level, Southern Energy Network organizer Jacquie Ayala said she was thrilled with last week’s ruling.
“It’s huge for us. We’re a really small organization,” said Ayala, whose group has registered 547 new voters, nearly all of them college students. “Working hard to register people then meeting a 5 o’clock deadline every other day or face a fine was just too much sometimes.”
The school district and the energy network are just two of 146 registration groups that accounted for 287,481 new registrations, about three percent of the state’s registered voters, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
By Ethan Magoc, News21