Nonprofit groups have launched two separate efforts to challenge voter registration laws passed by the Florida legislature that would suppress voting, especially among minority populations. First, the U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to reject a recently passed law that would discourage nonprofit voter registration drives by making it difficult to collect and submit completed registration forms in batches. Second, a lawsuit was filed Sept. 18 challenging a requirement that all voter registration applications match Social Security or driver's license numbers. When spelling errors or other glitches occur, voters are required to go through a complicated process that discourages voting. Voter registration, and the proper role for nonprofits in that process, has been the source of heated debate in Florida for the last several years. The Florida legislature began to revise voter registration regulations after 2004. During that year, third-party registrants, the majority of which were charitable organizations, signed up an unprecedented number of Florida voters. On Sept. 6, the Brennan Center and the Advancement Project sent a letter appealing to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to reject the third-party registration provisions, which would make it more difficult for third parties, including charities, to conduct voter registration drives. The new requirements were passed as part of a larger election bill signed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) in May that includes funding for optical scan voting machines that provide a voter-verified paper trail. Similar restrictions for third-party registration were declared unconstitutional by a federal court in Florida last year in League of Women Voters v. Cobb. Like the legislation overturned by the courts last year, the new law imposes fines on charities for each voter registration not submitted within ten days of its completion. For each late registration, a nonprofit conducting a voter registration drive would be fined $50. If a nonprofit fails to turn in a completed registration by the book closing deadline, the fine increases to $100. According to the Florida Department of State, the book closing deadline is normally the 29th day before an election. For example, Oct. 6, 2008, is the book closing date for Florida's 2008 general election. If a nonprofit completely fails to turn in completed registrations, the fine is $500 per registration. For charitable organizations that have registered hundreds of voters in past campaigns, these fines represent a strong disincentive to conduct voter registration drives in the future. In a recent statement, the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters said the provisions are "anti-voter" and "stifles voter registration efforts by grassroots organizations." The Brennan Center and the Advancement Project are protesting the provisions on the grounds that they will have a retrogressive effect on the voting rights of minorities in Florida. According to the Voting Rights Act, Florida has to demonstrate to the Department of Justice that any law regulating their voting process does not have "the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color" through a process of "preclearance." In their letter, the Brennan Center and the Advancement Project argued that because minorities in Florida are twice as likely as whites to register through third parties, the provisions will negatively affect the electoral participation of Floridians who are minorities. In a separate challenge to Florida's voter registration laws, a Florida chapter of the NAACP and a Miami-based nonprofit group called Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition filed a federal lawsuit on Sept.18 asking a U.S. District Court to overturn a Florida law that requires all voter registration applications to be matched with either a Social Security number or driver's license number. The Florida legislature's rationale for passage of the law was that the new requirement is necessary in order to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). However, HAVA does not require this methodology to verify voter registrations. In fact, one federal court has found it to be unconstitutional. In Washington Association of Churches v. Reed, the Brennan Center sued to prevent implementation of a similar procedure. The group won a preliminary injunction in August 2006, and in March 2007, the court issued an http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/wac.php">order blocking enforcement of the law. The plaintiffs argued that the Washington state law violated HAVA, as well as the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act. In the current lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that as a consequence of not "matching," perhaps due to misspellings or typos, "voters will not be allowed to cast a valid ballot unless they overcome a series of burdensome bureaucratic hurdles that deprive them of their fundamental right to vote." According to the lawsuit, 20,000 registrations were denied or delayed in 2006 due to the matching process. The groups that filed the lawsuit are receiving legal support from the Brennan Center. Sec. 303 of HAVA requires states to develop computerized databases of registered voters with unique identification numbers. However, states cannot impose illegal preconditions. A Brennan Center issue brief says, "Federal law asks states to try to match registration information to other government databases in order to validate the unique number assigned to every individual in the statewide registration system. However, the law allows states to set flexible standards for determining when a match is found. And federal law requires states to register an eligible voter even if the state cannot locate matching information elsewhere." In a statement quoted in The Miami Herald, the president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, Adora Obi Nweze, expressed her frustration with Florida election laws. "With the elections approaching, we should be doing everything we can to ensure that eligible citizens can register to vote and have it count. But Florida's Draconian registration law won't give many citizens that chance." Nweze continued, "We are particularly concerned about the impact of this law on African Americans with unique names and spellings." In a statement released in response to the lawsuit, Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning expressed confidence in the legality of the legislation and asserted, "If a discrepancy arises, every Florida voter has the opportunity to provide verification of eligibility."