A growing number of nonprofit organizations in states across the country are finding new rules make it difficult or impossible to continue their nonpartisan voter registration efforts. In Florida, the League of Women Voters and a host of other groups have sued the state to stop enforcement of rules that make such voter registration drives substantially more difficult and risky.

The League of Women Voters of Florida has worked to encourage eligible voters to register to vote since 1939. After a new law took effect in January, however, the group suspended all of its voter registration programs, blaming what it calls the Florida law's "punishing and complicated regime of deadlines and fines."

In May, the League and other plaintiffs filed League of Women Voters et. al. v. Cobb et. al. in the U.S. District Court in Miami to stop enforcement of the new law. The plaintiffs include community, religious, labor and educational groups. They describe their concerns in a May 18 release: "For each and every voter registration form submitted more than ten days after the form was collected from a prospective voter, the government will impose a fine of $250, while for each registration form submitted after the passing of a registration deadline, the fine is $500. If a registration form is not submitted, for any reason, the fine per form jumps to $5,000.

Most chilling to plaintiffs' activities is the law's adoption of a 'strict liability' legal standard, meaning that no extenuating circumstance -- not even destruction of an office by a hurricane -- will excuse the failure to submit a registration form. Plaintiffs say the impact of multiple fines would devastate the budgets of many non-partisan voter registration groups."

The complaint in the suit explains that the new laws and fines only apply to nonpartisan groups, exempting political parties, including the Surfers Party. However, plaintiffs say there is no evidence of more lost or late voter registration forms from non-party groups than from political parties. They also point out that this uneven treatment is unconstitutional and could "devastate the budgets of many nonpartisan voter registration groups."

Overall, the impact will be that, "These fines will quickly erase from the state some of the most basic rights of American democracy: the non-partisan voter registration table at the mall or bus stop; the unaffiliated registration advocate at a school or workplace; and the encouragement to participate in elections often found in churches and synagogues," according to Elizabeth Westfall of the Advancement Project.

The Florida suit may be only the first in a number of similar challenges to laws negatively impacting nonpartisan voter registration initiatives throughout the country. A fact sheet from the Brennan Center notes that similar laws have been recently enacted in Colorado, Ohio, Maryland and New Mexico; with Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and other states considering similar bills. In all cases, the laws seem to make voter registration efforts substantially more difficult, or perhaps impossible, for organizations who have "dramatically increased voter registration rates among groups that have traditionally faced the greatest barriers to voting."