Florida State Conference of the National Ass'n for the Advancement of Colored People v. Browning

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
____________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
April 3, 2008
No. 07-15932 THOMAS K. KAHN
_____________ CLERK
D.C. Docket No. 07-00402-CV-1-SPM-WCS

FLORIDA STATE CONFERENCE OF THE NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE (NAACP), AS AN ORGANIZATION AND REPRESENTATIVE OF
ITS MEMBERS, HAITIAN AMERICAN GRASSROOTS COALITION,
AS AN ORGANIZATION AND AND REPRESENTATIVE OF ITS
MEMBERS, SOUTHWEST VOTER REGISTRATION EDUCATION PROJECT,
AS AN ORGANIZATION AND REPRESENTATIVE OF ITS CLIENTS,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

versus

KURT S. BROWNING,
IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SECRETARY
OF STATE FOR THE STATE OF FLORIDA,

Defendant-Appellant.

______________

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Florida
_____________

(April 3, 2008)

Before TJOFLAT, DUBINA and BARKETT, Circuit Judges.
TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

This is an appeal of a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of a

Florida voter registration statute as being preempted by two different federal

statutes. The state law would require as a precondition of registering to vote for

the first time in Florida that the voter disclose her driver’s license number or the

last four digits of her Social Security number on the registration application, and

that this number match up with the number for this voter contained in the state

driver’s license database or the Social Security Administration’s database,

respectively. The district court held that plaintiffs, several organizations

representing the interests of minority communities in Florida, had standing to

challenge the statute, would likely succeed at trial on the merits of their claim that

federal law preempts the enforcement of the state law, and would suffer irreparable

injury absent provisional relief. Accordingly, the court preliminarily enjoined the

enforcement of the state statute. We affirm the district court’s decision on

plaintiffs’ standing to prosecute this action and reverse its decision granting the

preliminary injunction.

I.

In the wake of the November 2000 presidential election and its attendant

controversies, Congress undertook to review and reform the administration of

2
federal elections. This legislative effort resulted in the Help America Vote Act of

2002, Pub. L. 107-252, 116 Stat. 1706 (codified at 42 U.S.C. § 15301 et seq.)

(“HAVA”). Title III of HAVA, pertinent to this appeal, imposes a set of

requirements upon the states in the areas of voter registration and election

administration. The Act charges the states to implement its array of directives.

See 42 U.S.C. § 15485. One such provision mandates that each state create a

centralized, periodically updated database for its registration rolls, and that each

registered voter must be linked to a unique identification number in this database.

See 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a). Voters are required to provide on their registration

application forms either the last four digits of their Social Security numbers or their

driver’s license numbers; if a voter has been issued neither number, then the state

is required to assign to that voter a unique identification number for entry into the

database. See id. at § 15483(a)(5)(A). HAVA also directs each state to determine

according to its own laws whether the information provided by the registrant “is

sufficient to meet the [federal] requirements.” Id. at § 15483(a)(5)(A)(iii).

The state statute challenged in this case, Florida Statutes § 97.053(6)

(“Subsection 6”), was enacted by the Florida legislature in 2005 and became

effective on January 1, 2006, as part of Florida’s implementation of HAVA. As

amended, Subsection 6 imposes a new verification process as a precondition of

3
voter registration for first-time registrants in Florida. See Fla. Stat. § 97.053(6).

Under Florida law, valid registration is a prerequisite to voting in elections. See

Fla. Const. art. VI, § 2 (“Every citizen of the United States who is at least eighteen

years of age and who is a permanent resident of the state, if registered as provided

by law, shall be an elector of the county where registered.”); Fla. Stat. § 97.053(2)

(“If the applicant fails to complete his or her voter registration application . . . such

applicant shall not be eligible to vote in that election.”). To be eligible to register

to vote, a person must be a citizen of the United States, a permanent resident of

Florida, over the age of eighteen, and not have been convicted of a felony or

adjudicated mentally incapacitated. See Fla. Stat. § 97.041. Florida law also

requires the voter to file her registration application at least twenty-nine days

before a scheduled election, the so-called book closing date, in order to be eligible

to vote in that election. See Fla. Stat. § 97.053(3)-(4); § 97.055.

To complete a registration form, the applicant must disclose certain personal

identifying information, including the applicant’s name, home address, and date of

birth. Additionally, both Subsection 6 and HAVA require each applicant to

provide either her Florida driver’s license (or state-issued non-driver identification)

number or the last four digits of the applicant’s Social Security number when

4
registering to vote.1 Subsection 6 also requires that before an application is

accepted and the voter is listed as registered, the Florida Department of State must

first verify or match the number provided in the application with the number

assigned to the applicant’s name by the state Department of Highway Safety and

Motor Vehicles (“DHSMV”) or the Social Security Administration (“SSA”).

The consequences of the matching procedure are at the center of this

controversy. After a voter completes the registration application form and turns it

in to the county election officials, the Department of State takes the information on

the application form and compares it electronically against the information

contained in the DHSMV and SSA databases.2 If the information the applicant

1
Those who affirm that they have neither a Social Security number nor a Florida driver’s
or identification number are not required to fill out that portion of the application but instead
must provide a copy of an identifying document from a pre-approved list.
2
Both state and federal agencies participate in the matching process. If the applicant
supplied a Florida identification number (driver’s license or non-driver identification issued by
the DHSMV), the DHSMV will first attempt an automatic electronic match by comparing the
identification number and the name of the applicant against the number and name in the
DHSMV’s database. The result will either be a match, nonmatch, or possible match. Possible
matches are then reviewed by the Florida Bureau of Voter Registration Services within the
Department of State, which will manually check the individual possible matches against the
entries in the same DHSMV database. Nonmatches are returned to the Supervisor of Elections
in each county for further review.
If the applicant supplied the last four digits of her Social Security number instead, her
application information is forwarded to the SSA for verification. The SSA protocol compares
the applicant’s Social Security number, first name, last name, and year and month of birth
against the records in its database. All four elements have to match exactly with at least one
entry for a living person in the SSA database to be considered a “match” by Florida. Entries that
match only with deceased persons in the SSA database are further reviewed by the Bureau of
Voter Registration Services, and all nonmatches are reviewed by the county Supervisors of
Elections.

5
fills out on her registration form cannot be matched to the information held by the

DHSMV or the SSA, the registration will not be completed and the applicant will

receive a brief and generic notification through the mail to that effect.3

What the voter must do to correct the mistake depends on the nature of the

error, which unfortunately is not always made known to the applicant before she

goes to correct it. If an error was made by the Department of State, e.g., during the

data entry or matching process someone transposes two digits of a driver’s license

number, then the applicant needs to present documentary proof, like a copy of her

driver’s license or Social Security card, to the county Supervisor of Elections

showing that the identification information she submitted in her application was

correct. The voter can do this either before election day, or she can go to the polls

on election day and cast a provisional ballot and then within two days bring the

proof to the Supervisor of Elections. See Fla. Stat. § 97.053(6); § 101.048

(specifying the procedure for validating a provisional ballot).

However, if the error was made by the applicant herself – either by

transposing digits in the entry of the driver’s license number or by entering a

3
Florida law requires officials to enter the information received from applicants within
thirteen days of receiving the application. Fla. Stat. § 97.053(7). State law also provides that
election officials must notify applicants within five business days of any failure to provide the
necessary and correct information on the registration application. Fla. Stat. § 97.052(6). Thus,
from the date the election officials receive the application, they have up to a maximum of
eighteen days to notify the applicant of any error or omission – including a mismatch of the
identification numbers – on the application.

6
nickname or maiden name instead of the precise spelling of her legal name – then

the only way to cure the defect and be eligible to vote in the upcoming election is

by filing a new application with the correct information before the book closing

date.4 See Fla. Stat. § 97.052(6) (an applicant can correct any missing information

on the registration form “up until the book closing [date] for [the] next election”);

§ 97.053(6) (a provisional ballot will be counted only if the applicant can verify the

authenticity of the identification numbers “provided on the application”). There is

no post-election way to fix an applicant-side error, and the provisional ballot cast

by such a voter would not be counted because the voter would have failed to

register in time. See Fla. Stat. § 101.048(2)(b)2 (“If it is determined that the

person voting the provisional ballot was not registered . . . then the provisional

ballot shall not be counted . . . .”).5

II.

Plaintiffs are the Florida State Conference of the National Association for

the Advancement of Colored People (“Florida NAACP”), the Southwest Voter

4
This rule has the practical effect of moving back the date before each election by which
voters must register, which is currently set at twenty-nine days before the election. See Fla. Stat.
§ 97.055. Since there is always a risk of making a mistake on the form, applicants must know to
file the application early enough so that they can be notified of a mismatch and refile the
application before the book closing date.
5
It goes without saying that this court’s interpretation of Subsection 6 for the purposes of
this challenge, including but not limited to the post-election curability of applicant-side errors, is
subject to different, authoritative interpretations by the Florida state courts.

7
Registration Education Project (“SVREP”), and the Haitian-American Grassroots

Coalition (“HAGC”). All three plaintiff organizations work, among other goals, to

increase voter registration and participation among members of racial and ethnic

minority communities in Florida. The Florida NAACP and the HAGC are both

umbrella organizations with local chapters throughout the state and have

approximately 13,000 and 700 members statewide, respectively. SVREP is not a

membership organization and has no members in Florida.

Plaintiffs filed this suit in the United States District Court for the Northern

District of Florida and simultaneously moved for a preliminary injunction against

the Florida Secretary of State, seeking to block the enforcement of Subsection 6

prior to the book closing date for the primary election held on January 29, 2008.

The amended complaint raises a host of claims for relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,

alleging that Subsection 6 violates the fundamental right to vote contained in the

First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment, and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It also

raises statutory claims, alleging that Subsection 6 conflicts with and is preempted

by the follwing: section 303 of HAVA, 42 U.S.C. § 15483; section 2 of the Voting

Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. § 1973; Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42

U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(B); and the National Voter Registration Act, 42 U.S.C. §

8
1973gg-6.

The Secretary opposed the preliminary injunction and also moved to dismiss

all of the counts in the amended complaint for failing to state claims upon which

relief can be granted and for failing to establish that plaintiffs have standing under

Article III of the Constitution to seek relief.

After expedited discovery, the district court held that plaintiffs have Article

III standing in three different capacities. First, plaintiffs have standing to sue on

their own behalf as organizations whose missions would be impeded and whose

resources would be diverted as a direct result of the enforcement of Subsection 6.

Second, the Florida NAACP and the HAGC also have standing as representatives

of their members who are otherwise eligible voters but nonetheless face an

imminent threat of being disenfranchised by enforcement of Subsection 6.6 Third,

the court held that plaintiffs also have third-party standing to sue on behalf of

nonmember eligible voters in Florida who would be denied registration and hence

the vote under Subsection 6.7

In a separate order and opinion, the district court granted plaintiffs’ motion

6
Plaintiff SVREP acknowledges that it does not have associational standing because it is
not a membership organization.
7
As we are satisfied that plaintiffs have met Article III’s standing requirements under the
alternative theories actually litigated – as representatives of their members and as organizations
directly injured – we pretermit consideration of the issue of whether plaintiffs have standing to
litigate the claims of nonmembers in a representative capacity.

9
for preliminary injunction. It found that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the

merits of their conflict preemption claims under HAVA and Title I of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1971, and that without a provisional remedy the

plaintiffs would likely suffer irreparable harm once the book closing date passed.

Because the statutory claims under HAVA and § 1971 were sufficient to

grant plaintiffs’ motion, the court avoided deciding whether the constitutional

challenges were likely to succeed on the merits. However, the court held that

plaintiffs’ factual allegations were sufficient to state constitutional claims for relief

and thus denied the Secretary’s motion to dismiss those claims. On plaintiffs’

remaining two statutory claims – under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and

under the National Voter Registration Act – the court granted the Secretary’s

motion to dismiss. The Secretary now appeals the district court’s decision on

standing and its order granting the preliminary injunction.8

III.

We first review whether any plaintiff has standing under Article III to

invoke the jurisdiction of the federal courts to “decide the merits of the dispute or

of particular issues.” Nat’l Alliance for the Mentally Ill, St. John’s Inc. v. Bd. of

8
The district court did not assess the likelihood of plaintiffs’ success on the merits in
their constitutional challenges, and neither side on appeal has briefed the constitutional merits
issues. These issues are therefore not before us.

10
County Comm’rs, 376 F.3d 1292, 1294 (11th Cir. 2004) (quoting Warth v. Seldin,

422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S. Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L. Ed. 2d 343 (1975)). This limitation

follows from Article III’s grant of judicial power to the federal courts to decide

only “cases” and “controversies.” See Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750, 104 S.

Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L. Ed. 2d 556 (1984). The constitutionally minimum

requirements for standing are three-fold. First, the plaintiff must have suffered, or

must face an imminent and not merely hypothetical prospect of suffering, an

invasion of a legally protected interest resulting in a “concrete and particularized”

injury. Second, the injury must have been caused by the defendant’s complained-

of actions. Third, the plaintiff’s injury or threat of injury must likely be redressible

by a favorable court decision. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555,

560-61, 112 S. Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L. Ed. 2d 351 (1992). The standing dispute in

this case is entirely over the first factor, the demonstration of injury in fact.9

Plaintiffs argued below and presently maintain that they have demonstrated the

9
Although the Secretary on appeal does not question the other two factors affecting
standing, causation and redressibility, we review nostra sponte whether they are satisfied in this
case and conclude that they are. If we accept the injury to be that Subsection 6 will hinder the
organizations’ ability to carry out their mission of registering eligible voters by forcing plaintiffs
to divert time and resources needed to comply with the matching requirement, causation is
apparent. An injunction against the enforcement of Subsection 6 would also redress this injury
by doing away with the matching requirement, thereby freeing up the organizations to get on
with their business. Because these two requirements of standing on plaintiffs’ own behalf are
met, we need not consider whether plaintiffs would also meet these two standing requirements
under the associational or third-party theories.

11
imminent threat of injury both to their members and to themselves.

A.

1.

An organization has standing to enforce the rights of its members “when its

members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right, the interests at

stake are germane to the organization’s purpose, and neither the claim asserted nor

the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the

lawsuit.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S.

167, 181, 120 S. Ct. 693, 704, 145 L. Ed. 2d 610 (2000) (citing Hunt v.

Washington State Apple Adver. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S. Ct. 2434, 2441,

53 L. Ed. 2d 383 (1977)); see also Doe v. Stincer, 175 F.3d 879, 882 (11th Cir.

1999). The Secretary does not challenge the germaneness prong of this inquiry,

and we find that the interests of voters in being able to register are clearly germane

to plaintiffs’ purposes. The Secretary likewise does not contest the third prong,

and we are mindful that when the relief sought is injunctive, individual

participation of the organization’s members is “not normally necessary.” United

Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 751 v. Brown Group, Inc., 517 U.S.

544, 546, 116 S. Ct. 1529, 1531, 134 L. Ed. 2d 758 (1996). The nub is whether the

members themselves would have standing.

12
 The Secretary argues that because plaintiffs have not identified any specific

members who have had their registration denied due to a typographical or clerical

error, the members and therefore plaintiffs lack associational standing. Plaintiffs

respond that this information is understandably unavailable because they seek to

prevent future harm to the large number of individuals likely to register in the

upcoming elections in November 2008, among whom, plaintiffs contend, are likely

to be members of their organizations.

In lawsuits seeking a remedy for past violations of an organization’s

members’ rights, it makes sense that, after some discovery, the plaintiff be required

to list at least one member who has been injured. But see Stincer, 175 F.3d at 884

(“[U]nder Article III’s established doctrines of representational standing, we have

never held that a party suing as a representative must specifically name the

individual on whose behalf the suit is brought . . . .”). The cases cited by the

Secretary tend to support this proposition concerning past harms, but they do not

necessarily extend the requirement of presenting specific injured members to

claims of future harms. Anderson v. City of Alpharetta, 770 F.2d 1575 (11th Cir.

1985) (per curiam), affirmed the district court’s holding that the NAACP lacked

associational standing to assert the constitutional claims of its members because

the organization had not been able to identify any member who had been prevented

13
by the city’s putatively unconstitutional actions from living in public housing in

Alpharetta. Id. at 1582-83. Likewise, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, St.

Johns Inc. v. Board of County Commissioners of St. John’s County, 376 F. 3d

1292 (11th Cir. 2004), also involved claims based on injuries allegedly caused by

the defendant’s past violations. Id. at 1295. It is not surprising then that we

affirmed dismissals in these cases for lack of standing because the organizational

plaintiffs could not name specific members who have already been injured, as this

inability to do so strongly supported the inference that no members were in fact

injured.

The situation before us is different. When the alleged harm is prospective,

we have not required that the organizational plaintiffs name names because every

member faces a probability of harm in the near and definite future. The Supreme

Court has accepted imminent harm as satisfying the injury-in-fact requirement of

Article III standing. In Babbit v. United Farm Workers National Union, 442 U.S.

289, 99 S. Ct. 2301, 60 L. Ed. 2d 895 (1979), the Court stated that although a

plaintiff must establish “a realistic danger of sustaining a direct injury as a result of

the statute’s operation or enforcement,” id. at 298, 99 S. Ct. at 2308, he “does not

have to await the consummation of threatened injury to obtain preventive relief.”

Id. (quoting Ry. Mail Ass’n v. Corsi, 326 U.S. 88, 93, 65 S. Ct. 1483, 1487, 89 L.

14
Ed. 2072 (1945)); 31 Foster Children v. Bush, 329 F.3d 1255, 1265 (11th Cir.

2003). “Imminence” as a doctrinal standard is “somewhat elastic,” Lujan, 504 U.S.

at 564 n.2, 112 S. Ct. at 2138 n.2, and applying it is not an exercise in conceptual

analysis but an attempt to advance the purposes behind the case-or-controversy

requirement of Article III, including the guaranty of actual adversity between the

parties, the limitation on the power of federal courts, see Midrash Sephardi, Inc. v.

Town of Surfside, 366 F.3d 1214, 1223 (11th Cir. 2004), and the reservation of

judicial resources to resolve more concrete and pressing disputes, see Bowen v.

First Family Fin. Servs., Inc., 233 F.3d 1331, 1340 (11th Cir. 2000).

An imminent injury is one that is “likely to occur immediately.” 31 Foster

Children, 329 F.3d at 1265. The alleged injury in this case, denial of voter

registration and hence the right to have one’s vote counted, will occur if at all

before the scheduled elections in November 2008. Plaintiffs have averred that they

intend to increase voter registration efforts and anticipate increased registration

applications ahead of the upcoming presidential election. This is sufficient to meet

the immediacy requirement and distinguishes this case from the scenario in Elend

v. Basham, 471 F.3d 1199 (11th Cir. 2006). In Elend, the plaintiffs sought an

injunction against the United States Secret Service to prevent the latter from

restricting plaintiffs to sequestered “First Amendment zones” during future protests

15
against President Bush. 471 F.3d at 1203. We upheld the dismissal for lack of

standing because the plaintiffs failed to allege when, where, and how such protests

were going to occur in the future. Id. at 1206-07. Given that judicial review of so-

called time, place, and manner restrictions under the First Amendment are highly

context-sensitive, see Clark v. Cmty for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 104

S. Ct. 3065, 82 L. Ed. 2d 221 (1984), it was proper to find that there was at that

time no justiciable case or controversy. In contrast, plaintiffs here have alleged

when and in what manner the alleged injuries are likely going to occur.

Immediacy requires only that the anticipated injury occur with some fixed period

of time in the future, not that it happen in the colloquial sense of soon or precisely

within a certain number of days, weeks, or months. See Adarand Constructors,

Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 211-12, 115 S. Ct. 2097, 2105, 132 L. Ed. 2d 158

(1995).

The requirement of immediacy is satisfied; substantial likelihood of future

injury poses a different question. To be likely enough, the threatened future injury

must pose a “realistic danger” and cannot be merely hypothetical or conjectural.

How likely is enough is necessarily a qualitative judgment, see Wilderness Soc’y

v. Alcock, 83 F.3d 386, 390 (11th Cir. 1996), and courts should look for guidance

from precedent in the analogical style of the common law tradition, see Allen v.

16
Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751-52, 104 S. Ct. 3315, 3324-25, 82 L. Ed. 2d 556 (1984).

The line of cases including and following City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S.

95, 103 S. Ct. 1660, 75 L. Ed. 2d 675 (1983), provides some guideposts on factors

that are relevant to this assessment. In Lyons, the Supreme Court held that the

plaintiff lacked standing to seek prospective injunctive relief against the City of

Los Angeles to prevent the City’s police from applying a kind of choke hold on

suspects absent a threat that the suspect would use deadly force to resist arrest.

Lyons, 461 U.S. at 105, 103 S. Ct. at 1667.10 Lyons alleged that the City

authorized the police’s use of choke holds in violation of, among other

constitutional provisions, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,

but the Court surmised that this policy even if present was not enough to establish

a likelihood of future injury to Lyons. Id. at 106, 103 S. Ct. at 1667.

Several factors appear to undergird the Court’s denial of standing in Lyons.

First, the Court noted that for the threatened injury to occur, a sequence of

individually improbable events would have to occur: (1) Lyons would have to do

something to cause another run-in with the Los Angeles police; (2) the city would

10
Although Lyons himself had been subject to such a choke hold on a prior encounter
with the police, the Court, following its earlier decision in O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 94
S. Ct. 669, 38 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1974), emphasized that “past wrongs do not in themselves amount
to that real and immediate threat of injury necessary to make out a case or controversy.” Lyons,
461 U.S. at 103, 103 S. Ct. at 1666.

17
have to have authorized all police officers to use choke holds unnecessarily; (3) the

police officers in that specific encounter would have to use a choke hold; and (4)

the use in that situation would have to have been unnecessary. See id. at 105-06,

93 S. Ct. at 1667. Each event’s occurrence was spatially and temporally

indeterminate, as opposed to being fixed to either occur or not occur at some time

and place. This open-endedness and the number of independent events needed to

bring about the alleged injury combined to cast the injury into the realm of

conjecture and speculation. See id. at 108, 93 S. Ct. at 1668.

Second, the threatened injury in Lyons was predicated on the plaintiff first

doing something that at least would give an officer probable cause to detain or

arrest him. The Court voiced its hesitance to assume that the plaintiff will

routinely violate the law in the future and thus be brought within arms’ reach of the

police. See id. at 103, 93 S. Ct. at 1665. Third, there was an adequate remedy at

law for the threatened injury in Lyons, namely a damages suit against the City and

police should an officer unconstitutionally choke the plaintiff at some future point.

Id. at 111, 93 S. Ct. at 1670.

Unpacking the Court’s basis for denying standing in Lyons reveals that there

is no per se rule denying standing to prevent probabilistic injuries. Indeed, since

Lyons we have repeatedly upheld plaintiffs’ standing when the alleged injury was

18
prospective and probabilistic in nature. A year after Lyons was decided, we held

that a mentally ill person who was not at the time in state custody had standing to

challenge the constitutionality of an Alabama state practice of placing persons in

county jails pending involuntary commitment proceedings. See Lynch v. Baxley,

744 F.2d 1452, 1457 (11th Cir. 1984). Observing co-plaintiff Pearcy’s history of

treatable but recurrent psychopathology, we noted that “there is every likelihood

that any [commitment] petition filed against Pearcy would result in his

incarceration in [county] jail.” Id. Ordinarily, a civil commitment petition would

not land one in jail. But given the lack of mental health facilities in some counties,

“it is highly likely that state officials will continue to employ the county jails to

detain” the named plaintiffs and others. Id. The Lynch panel distinguished cases

like Lyons on the basis that Pearcy and others like him could not exercise any form

of conscious control over the likelihood of the threatened injury occurring. Id. at

1457 n.7; see also 31 Foster Children, 329 F.3d at 1266-67 (affirming standing of

foster children to sue to enjoin future violations of substantive due process based

on probability of children suffering future harm while in foster homes); Church v.

City of Huntsville, 30 F.3d 1332, 1339 (11th Cir. 1994) (distinguishing Lyons and

affirming standing of homeless persons to sue for injunctive relief to prevent city

from authorizing police harassment and arrest of homeless persons without cause).

19
In sum, probabilistic harm is “enough injury in fact to confer . . . standing in the

undemanding Article III sense.” Tenn. Valley Auth. v. U.S. Envtl. Protection

Agency, 278 F.3d 1184, 1207 (11th Cir. 2002) (quoting N. Shore Gas Co. v. Envtl.

Protection Agency, 930 F.2d 1239, 1242 (7th Cir. 1991) (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

Plaintiffs present two kinds of probabilistic injuries to their members. First,

they claim that Subsection 6 illegally prevents voters whose registration

applications fail to match, due to an error made either by them or by the state, from

casting a regular ballot. Second, they claim that Subsection 6 illegally prevents

voters whose applications fail to match due to their own mistake from casting a

provisional ballot that ultimately gets counted.11 The likelihood that any given

individual will eventually be injured depends on the likelihood that an error of

some kind will cause a mismatch. It is not entirely clear from the record what the

relevant error rate is in Florida’s matching process. However, even using the

numbers cited in the Secretary’s brief, we arrive at a rejection rate of about one

percent.12 Applying this one percent rate going forward, the odds that any given

11
Subsection 6 already provides that a voter can cast a provisional ballot and correct a
mismatch if the mismatch was caused by a mistake by the Department; however, under state law
if the mistake was on the application itself, no cure after the election date is possible.
12
Data gathered between January 1, 2006, the effective date of Subsection 6, and
September 30, 2007, show that there were 14,326 applications rejected for mismatches out of a
total of 1,529,465 registration applications.

20
application will be rejected because of a mismatch is also one percent.

To satisfy the requirements of associational standing, all that plaintiffs need

to establish is that at least one member faces a realistic danger of having his or her

application rejected due to a mistaken mismatch. Given that the NAACP and

SVREP collectively claim around 20,000 members state-wide, it is highly unlikely

– even with only a one percent chance of rejection for any given individual – that

not a single member will have his or her application rejected due to a mismatch.13

Unlike the alleged threat of injury in Lyons, the “odds” of an injury occurring in

this case does not depend on conjecture about how individuals will intentionally

act in the future. Rather, the injuries are foreseeable and the expected results of

unconscious and largely unavoidable human errors in transcription. Moreover,

unlike in Lyons, the chain of events leading to the eventual injury does not begin

with an assumption that someone will commit an illegal act; the chain begins when

people try to register to vote.

Human fallibility being what it is, someone is certain to get injured in the

13
Based on Florida voter registration data, about one percent of the total number of
registration applications through September 2007 were rejected due to a mismatch. The same
data reveal that the rate of rejection among African-Americans and Latinos was two percent. If
there are even 200 individuals among the 20,000 members of the Florida NAACP and SVREP
who are first-time registrants and thus subject to Subsection 6’s matching requirement, the
probability that not even a single one will be rejected through the matching process is only
thirteen percent, if we use the one-percent error rate. If we apply the two-percent rate of
rejection for African-Americans and Latinos, the likelihood that at least one person out of 200
will fail to match increases to over ninety-eight percent.

21
end. By their nature, the kinds of mechanical, typographical mistakes that

plaintiffs claim will illegally disenfranchise voters under Subsection 6 cannot be

identified in advance. Cf. Sandusky County Democratic Party v. Blackwell, 387

F.3d 565, 574 (6th Cir. 2004). We are thus faced with the choice of deciding this

case on the merits now or waiting until thousands (if not more) of registrations are

actually rejected just weeks before the scheduled presidential election in November

2008. This question of timing turns not on standing but on the related

jurisdictional doctrine of ripeness. See Wilderness Soc’y, 83 F.3d at 390.

2.

Two considerations predominate the ripeness analysis: (1) “the hardship to

the parties of withholding court consideration” and (2) “the fitness of the issues for

judicial decision.” Ala. Power Co. v. U. S. Dep’t of Energy, 307 F.3d 1300, 1310

(11th Cir. 2002) (quoting Abbott Labs. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 149, 87 S. Ct.

1507, 1515, 18 L. Ed. 2d 681 (1967)). Both considerations weigh decidedly in

favor of reaching the merits of this appeal sooner rather than later. The Supreme

Court has long since held that where the enforcement of a statute is certain, a

preenforcement challenge will not be rejected on ripeness grounds. See Reg’l Rail

Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U.S. 102, 143, 95 S. Ct. 335, 358, 42 L. Ed. 2d 320

(1974). Since enforcement of Subsection 6 is automatic for all new voter

22
registrants, there is no doubt that the statute will be enforced against some of

plaintiffs’ members. The hardship to would-be voters is that if we require them to

wait until after their applications have been rejected to challenge Subsection 6,

there may not be enough time to reach a decision on the merits before the actual

election.

Waiting until rejections flow in en masse also imposes hardships on the

Secretary. If a court enjoins enforcement of Subsection 6 weeks or days before the

November election, it may be severely burdensome for the state to reconstitute its

registration lists in time. Worse yet, waiting might call into question the status of

provisional ballots already cast by voters whose information failed to match

because of a mistake on the application form itself, an error incurable under

Subsection 6 but potentially trumped by federal law. Judicial involvement in vote-

counting invariably invites ugly consequences with which Florida in particular is

so painfully familiar.

As for the second factor, the claims on appeal are fit for adjudication

because they are predominantly legal questions and the conflict preemption

analysis does not require much factual development. See Pac. Gas & Elec. Co. v.

State Energy Res. Conservation & Dev. Comm'n, 461 U.S. 190, 201-03, 103 S. Ct.

1713, 1720-22, 75 L. Ed. 2d 752 (1983). Subsection 6 is a straightforward statute,

23
so we are not in a worse position for a lack of a state court construction of it. See

id. We conclude that plaintiffs have standing to sue on behalf of their members.

B.

On their own behalf, plaintiffs contend that Subsection 6 will hinder their

abilities to carry out their missions of registering voters in their respective

communities. Specifically, plaintiffs argue that they will have to divert scarce time

and resources from registering additional voters to helping applicants correct the

anticipated myriad of false mismatches due to errors either by the Department of

State or by the applicant. Moreover, they claim that Subsection 6 will decrease

electoral participation in these communities by making it more difficult for eligible

individuals to register to vote and thereby undermine the organizations’ goals.

These injuries are different in kind from the alleged injuries to the organizations’

members, although both are traceable to the enforcement of Subsection 6.

In response, the Secretary makes two arguments. First, he contends that an

assertion that Subsection 6 will impede voter registration efforts is not sufficiently

concrete and particularized to meet Article III’s requirement of injury in fact.

Second, he asserts that even if plaintiffs can demonstrate that it will shift resources

away from new registrations to correct mismatches on prior applications, this shift

will be an entirely self-inflicted injury. In support of his position, the Secretary

24
relies principally on a recent district court opinion in Common Cause/Georgia v.

Billups, 504 F. Supp. 2d 1333 (N.D. Ga. 2007), which held that organizations

dedicated to registering voters do not have standing in their own right to challenge

a voter ID law. Id. at 1372-73. The opinion in Billups, in turn, relies heavily on a

district court opinion in Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 458 F. Supp. 2d 775

(S.D. Ind. 2006), aff’d sub nom. Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 472

F.3d 949 (7th Cir.), cert. granted 128 S. Ct. 34, 168 L. Ed. 2d 809 (2007).

The Rokita court held that organizations cannot establish injury in fact

through “imprecise and speculative claims concerning potential future actions”

designed to compensate for the effects of the statute. 458 F. Supp. 2d at 816. Any

resources that the organizations do end up expending would, moreover, be based

on that organization’s “sole and voluntary discretion.” Id. Although the Seventh

Circuit affirmed the merits holding in Rokita, it expressly held that an organization

suffers an injury in fact when a statute “compel[s]” it to divert more resources to

accomplishing its goals. Crawford, 472 F.3d at 951. Moreover, the court held that

“[t]he fact that the added cost has not been estimated and may be slight does not

affect standing, which requires only a minimal showing of injury.” Id. (citing

Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-

84, 120 S. Ct. 693, 704-06, 145 L. Ed. 2d 610 (2000)).

25
 In reaching its decision on standing, the Crawford court followed a line of

cases beginning with Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 102 S. Ct.

1114, 71 L. Ed. 2d 214 (1982). Havens held that an organization has standing to

sue on its own behalf if the defendant’s illegal acts impair its ability to engage in

its projects by forcing the organization to divert resources to counteract those

illegal acts.14 Id. at 379, 102 S. Ct. at 1124-25; see also Haitian Refugee Center,

Inc. v. Nelson, 872 F.2d 1555, 1561 n.10 (11th Cir. 1989). These injuries, the

Court determined, were sufficiently concrete to be more than the “abstract social

interests” not cognizable as injuries under Article III. See Havens, 455 U.S. at

379, 102 S. Ct. at 1124.

Plaintiffs have made a sufficient showing that they will suffer a concrete

injury under Subsection 6. The organizations reasonably anticipate that they will

have to divert personnel and time to educating volunteers and voters on compliance

with Subsection 6 and to resolving the problem of voters left off the registration

rolls on election day. These resources would otherwise be spent on registration

drives and election-day education and monitoring. SVREP anticipates that it will

14
The precise issue in Havens was whether the organizational plaintiff had statutory
standing to sue under section 812 of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3612. However,
the Court noted that because section 812 had been interpreted to “extend to the full limits of Art.
III,” the inquiry into statutory standing collapsed into the question of whether the injuries alleged
met the Article III minimum of injury in fact. Havens, 455 U.S. at 372, 102 S. Ct. at 1121.

26
expend many more hours than it otherwise would have conducting follow-up work

with registration applicants because voters will have their applications denied due

to matching failures. In HAGC’s case, compensating for the new obstacles created

by Subsection 6 would divert substantial resources away from helping voters who

may need language-translation assistance on election day. The Florida NAACP

plans to register ten percent of the African-Americans eligible to vote in the

upcoming election, and personnel that would otherwise be part of this registration

effort would have to be diverted to resolving mismatches under Subsection 6.

Instead of “abstract social interests,” the plaintiffs have averred that their actual

ability to conduct specific projects during a specific period of time will be

frustrated by Subsection 6’s enforcement. Even though the injuries are anticipated

rather than completed events, they satisfy the immediacy and likelihood

requirements for the same reasons as discussed in Section III.A, supra, and for

those reasons, the Secretary’s argument that the organizational injuries are not

concrete or particularized fails.

The Secretary’s second argument, that any diversion of resources in

response to Subsection 6 is voluntary and hence not an injury, also fails to

persuade. The Secretary attempts to draw a distinction between an act or law

negating the efforts of an organization, which is admittedly an injury under

27
Havens, and an act or law merely causing the organization to voluntarily divert

resources in response to the law, which he claims is not an injury cognizable under

Article III. This distinction finds no support in the law, and it misses the point.

For the proposition that “voluntary” diversion of resources are not injuries, the

district court in Billups cited an opinion from the Court of Appeals for the District

of Columbia Circuit stating that costs of using individual “testers” to ferret out

racial discrimination in employment cases cannot count toward the injury in fact

requirement. See Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington, Inc. v. BMC

Mktg. Corp., 28 F.3d 1268, 1276-77 (D.C. Cir. 1994). But this simply says that

plaintiffs cannot bootstrap the cost of detecting and challenging illegal practices

into injury for standing purposes. Costs unrelated to the legal challenge are

different and do qualify as an injury, whether they are voluntarily incurred or not.

The court expressly held that when a drain on an organization’s resources arises

from “the organization’s need to ‘counteract’ the defendants’ assertedly illegal

practices,” that drain is “simply another manifestation” of the injury to the

organization’s noneconomic goals. Id. at 1277.

In this case, the diversion of personnel and time to help voters resolve

matching problems effectively counteracts what would otherwise be Subsection 6’s

negation of the organizations’ efforts to register voters. The net effect is that the

28
average cost of registering each voter increases, and because plaintiffs cannot bring

to bear limitless resources, their noneconomic goals will suffer. Therefore,

plaintiffs presently have standing on their own behalf to seek relief.

IV.

We turn now to the merits of the appeal. Preliminary injunctions are

reviewed for abuse of discretion, but the legal conclusions underpinning them are

still subject to de novo review. See E. Remy Martin & Co., S.A. v. Shaw-Ross

Int’l Imports, Inc., 756 F.2d 1525, 1529 (11th Cir. 1985). Because we conclude

that the federal statutes do not conflict with and preempt Subsection 6, and

therefore that plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail on the merits of these claims at trial,

we need not discuss the other factors of the preliminary injunction analysis.15 This

Part addresses preemption under HAVA; Part V discusses § 1971 of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964.

Where the two conflict, federal law trumps state law; that was always clear.

See U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2; Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 210-11, 6

L. Ed. 23 (1824). What constitutes a conflict is often less clear. The well-worn

taxonomy of preemption doctrine identifies three categories: (1) express

15
The other factors include whether the plaintiffs will likely suffer irreparable injury
absent an injunction, whether the threatened injury to the plaintiffs outweighs the harm the
defendant suffers complying with the injunction, and whether the injunction would be adverse to
the public interest. See Klay v. United Healthgroup, Inc., 376 F.3d 1092, 1097 (11th Cir. 2004).

29
preemption; (2) field preemption; and (3) conflict preemption. See Gade v. Nat’l

Solid Wastes Mgmt. Ass’n, 505 U.S. 88, 98, 112 S. Ct. 2374, 2383, 120 L.Ed.2d

73 (1992) (O’Connor, J., concurring); Pharm. Research and Mfrs. of Am. v.

Meadows, 304 F.3d 1197, 1205 (11th Cir. 2002). Express preemption occurs when

Congress manifests its intent to displace a state law using the text of a federal

statute. See Meadows, 304 F.3d at 1205. Field and conflict preemption in turn

have been considered under the umbrella term “implied preemption.” See Glade,

505 U.S. at 98, 112 S. Ct. at 2383. Field preemption occurs when a congressional

legislative scheme is “so pervasive as to make the reasonable inference that

Congress left no room for the states to supplement it.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator

Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230, 67 S. Ct. 1146, 1152, 91 L. Ed. 1447 (1947). Conflict

preemption occurs either when it is physically impossible to comply with both the

federal and the state laws or when the state law stands as an obstacle to the

objective of the federal law. See Crosby v. Nat’l Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S.

363, 372-73, 120 S. Ct. 2288, 2294, 147 L. Ed. 2d 352 (2000).

Categories and labels are helpful, but only to a point, and they too often tend

to obfuscate instead of illuminate. In this particular area, the Supreme Court has

acknowledged the misleading nomenclature for its categories and conceded that

“field preemption may be understood as a species of conflict pre-emption.”

30
English v. General Elec. Co., 496 U.S. 72, 79, n. 5, 110 S. Ct. 2270, 2275 n.5, 110

L. Ed. 2d 65 (1990). Commentators have also questioned whether there is a

meaningful distinction between “express” and “implied” preemption, since “when

we say that a particular sequence of words in a statute ‘implies’ a given rule, we

are merely saying that the rule is part of what that sequence of (express) words

means in the context in which is appears.” Caleb Nelson, Preemption, 86 Va. L.

Rev. 225, 263 (2000); see also Laurence H. Tribe, Constitutional Law § 6-25 at

481 n.14 (2d ed. 1988) (noting that the “three categories of preemption are

anything but analytically air-tight,” and that “even when Congress declares its

preemptive intent in express language, deciding exactly what it meant to preempt

often resembles an exercise in implied preemption analysis”).

At bottom this is a case about statutory interpretation, viz., whether

Congress intended either HAVA or § 1971(a)(2) of the Civil Rights Act to displace

state laws like Subsection 6. The Secretary urges us to apply a presumption

against preemption because states have traditionally regulated elections. Although

his observation of the states’ traditional role is well-taken, in practice it is difficult

to understand what a presumption in conflict preemption cases amounts to, as we

are surely not requiring Congress to state expressly that a given state law is

preempted using some formula or magic words. See Irving v. Mazda Motor Corp.,

31
136 F.3d 764, 769 (11th Cir. 1998). Either Congress intended to displace certain

state laws or it did not. Federal law is not obliged to bend over backwards to

accommodate contradictory state laws, as should be clear from the Supremacy

Clause’s blanket instruction that federal law is the “supreme Law of the land . . .

any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary

notwithstanding.” U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2. Thus, whether an area of law is one of

traditional state regulation does not affect whether we will put a thumb on the scale

against giving effect to what Congress intended. But hewing to congressional

intent cuts both ways. Although we will not apply a presumption to give less

preemptive effect than Congress intended, we will also not apply an overly broad

construction of the statute’s supposed objectives to give more than Congress

intended.

HAVA represents Congress’s attempt to strike a balance between promoting

voter access to ballots on the one hand and preventing voter impersonation fraud

on the other. Plaintiffs argue that Subsection 6 conflicts with this balance in three

separate instances. First, plaintiffs argue that HAVA section 303(a) conflicts with

Subsection 6. Section 303(a) sets forth the requirements for the creation of new

state voter registration databases. See 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a). It requires states to

keep up-to-date and accurate rolls of registered voters and to eliminate redundant

32
entries. See id. § 15483(a)(4). Another provision of the subparagraph also

requires registration applicants to provide a unique identification number – either a

driver’s license number, a Social Security number, or a unique number assigned

specifically for this purpose – and requires the state to verify this number on new

voter registration applications in accordance with a procedure of the state’s

choosing. See id. § 15483(a)(5).

Plaintiffs contend that the objective of section 303(a) is to ensure that states

keep accurate records of registered voters, and that it was not intended to prescribe

matching as a federal precondition for voter registration. Further, plaintiffs argue

that Florida misunderstood what section 303(a) required and consequently acted as

though HAVA mandated matching as a precondition to registration, resulting in

the enactment of Subsection 6. The negative implication of section 303(a)’s actual

objective is, so it goes, that HAVA prohibits states from using the identification

verification process as a basis for excluding otherwise eligible voters. Assuming

that plaintiffs are right that section 303(a)(5) of HAVA does not impose matching

as a requirement of voter registration, it also does not seem to prohibit states from

implementing it. See 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(iii) (“The State shall determine

whether the information provided by an individual is sufficient to meet the

requirements of this subparagraph, in accordance with State law.”). Neither test of

33
conflict preemption pans out for the plaintiffs. It is certainly possible to comply

with both HAVA section 303(a) and Subsection 6. Indeed, if plaintiffs are correct

that section 303(a) is really just concerned with managing databases, then it has

nothing whatsoever to do with the registration requirements of Subsection 6 and

cannot be in conflict with it. Plaintiffs have failed to show how making matching a

prerequisite to registration undermines the functioning of the database itself, which

is, under plaintiffs’ own interpretation of the statute, the only objective of

section 303(a).

Second, plaintiffs argue that HAVA section 303(b) also conflicts with

Subsection 6. At the outset, it is important to point out a crucial difference

between the subject matter of Subsection 6 and of section 303(b). Section 303(b)

deploys HAVA’s provisions against voter impersonation fraud by imposing

additional restrictions on those individuals who registered by mail before they can

vote either a regular or a provisional ballot. It is not a federal registration

provision. Every command in section 303(b) applies only to voters who have

already registered – specifically, registered by mail instead of in person –

according to the laws of that voter’s state. Simplified, section 303(b) requires

voters who registered by mail to verify their identify in any one of three ways

before casting a regular ballot. First, the voter can present some form of

34
identification from a pre-approved statutory list at the polling location (or send a

copy of the identification with her mail-in vote). See 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b)(2)(A).

The second and third ways of verifying identity in order to vote occur at the point

of registration, but they are not registration requirements under section 303(b).16 A

voter can verify her identity either by presenting the same forms of acceptable

identification or by matching up one of her identification numbers (driver’s license

or Social Security) when she registers to vote. Id. § 15483(b)(3)(A)-(B).17

Nothing in this provision states or suggests that Congress intended to alter state

registration requirements, and certainly nothing in the section suggests that voters

can bypass state registration requirements entirely as long as they satisfy federal

identification requirements for voting a regular ballot.

To succeed on this argument, plaintiffs would have to demonstrate how a

provision dealing exclusively with voting requirements can be transformed to

conflict with a state statute on registration requirements. The only argument made

for a textual conflict is that upholding Subsection 6 would render HAVA

section 303(b)(3)(B) superfluous. Plaintiffs contend that this section, which

16
This is not to be confused with HAVA section 303(a)’s requirement that states refuse
to process or accept registration applications without either a driver’s license number, the last
four digits of the Social Security number, or a unique voter identification number. See 42 U.S.C.
§ 15483(a)(5).
17
The subsection contains a third set of exceptions to the identification requirement
created by other federal statutes that are inapposite here. See 42 U.S.C. 15483(b)(3)(C).

35
exempts those voters who pass the matching requirement at registration from

showing identification at voting, would be unnecessary if Subsection 6 stands

because every voter would need to match their Social Security or driver’s license

numbers at registration. This utterly misapplies the familiar canon of construction

that “a statute ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be prevented,

no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.” TRW Inc.

v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31, 122 S. Ct. 441, 449, 151 L. Ed. 2d 339 (2001)

(quoting Ducan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 174, 121 S. Ct. 2120, 2125, 150 L. Ed.

2d 251 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted)). This canon applies when courts

are discerning the meanings of different provisions of the same statute, and it

instructs that no portion of the statute should be read that would make another part

unnecessary. Clearly this is not the case here. Plaintiffs offer no authority or

reason to support an application of this canon to two different statutes from two

separate sovereigns, and such an approach would be untenable anyway. If courts

were to adopt plaintiffs’ interpretive method, then every federal statute that is

consistent and parallel with a state statute would, paradoxically, have the opposite

effect of preempting the state statute since the state statute would otherwise make

the federal statute superfluous.

Third, plaintiffs argue that Subsection 6 conflicts with HAVA

36
section 303(b)(2)(B)’s so-called fail-safe voting provision, which states that “[a]n

individual who desires to vote in person, but who does not meet the [identification]

requirements . . . may cast a provisional ballot” as described in section 302(a) of

HAVA. 42 U.S.C. § 15483(b)(2)(B)(i). Section 302(a) of HAVA, in turn,

provides that a voter who “does not appear on the official list of eligible voters for

the polling place” or who is claimed by the election official not to be an eligible

voter, can cast a provisional ballot upon affirming that the voter is registered and is

eligible to vote. See 42 U.S.C. § 15482(a). Once the provisional ballot is cast, the

election official is to determine whether the individual is “eligible under State law

to vote,” and the official must count the ballot if the voter is eligible. See id. §

15482(a)(4).

It is not entirely clear what plaintiffs’ interpretation of HAVA’s provisional

ballot provisions is, or where they think the conflict with Subsection 6 lies. HAVA

section 302(a) describes general procedures for casting and reviewing provisional

ballots; it does not impose any federal standards on voter registration or voter

eligibility, both of which remain state decisions. Subsection 6 itself states that a

voter who has failed to register due to a mismatch of the identification numbers can

cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted if the voter can verify the

information provided within two days of the election date. See Fla. Stat.

37
§ 97.053(6). HAVA section 302(a) expressly states that a provisional ballot be

counted only if the voter is eligible under state law to vote in that particular

election. Registration is an eligibility requirement under the Florida constitution

and statutes. See Fla. Const. art. VI; Fla. Stat. § 97.053(2). Subsection 6’s

provisional ballot measures are consistent with HAVA section 302(a), as both

statutes would count only those provisional ballots cast by voters who were

eligible – in Florida, registered – to vote in the election.

Perhaps plaintiffs interpret HAVA to mean that any voter eligible to register

under state law is entitled to have her provisional ballot count under section 302(a).

Commentators have called this interpretation the “substantive vision of provisional

voting,” which means that “the provisional ballot should count whenever the

individual who casts the ballot is someone who substantively has the qualifications

necessary to be a registered voter.” Edward B. Foley, The Promise and Problems

of Provisional Voting, 73 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1193, 1194 (2005).18 Such an

interpretation would turn section 302 into a sweeping federal invalidation of state

voter registration requirements, and while textually plausible it is not, in our

18
Contrast this with the “procedural vision” of provisional voting, which means that “if
the local election board never officially registered an individual because of an incomplete
registration form . . . the individual is out of luck.” Edward B. Foley, The Promise and Problems
of Provisional Voting, 73 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1193, 1195 (2005); see also id. (“The procedural
vision of provisional voting . . . mean[s] that if an omission were to be caused by voter error . . .
the individual would be stuck with the consequences.”).

38
judgment, the intent of Congress in enacting HAVA section 302.

Section 302 states that a voter wishing to cast a provisional ballot must be

“registered” to vote in her state and must execute a written affirmation to that

effect. It is only after the voter affirms that she is registered and is eligible to vote

that she can even fill out a provisional ballot. These parts of section 302 in clear

terms indicate that Congress did not intend to do away with the importance and

consequences of state registration requirements. Once the provisional ballot has

been cast, the state election officials must then “determine[] that the individual is

eligible” to vote before counting the ballot. 42 U.S.C. § 15482(a)(4).

It is worth noting that although Congress drew a distinction between a voter

being registered and a voter being eligible earlier in the same subsection, see id. §

15482(a)(2)(A)-(B), the verification subsection speaks only of determining

whether a voter is “eligible under State law,” not whether the voter ever

successfully registered. It is plausible to interpret this subsection, and its omission

of two words like “and registered,” to mean that Congress rewrote all state voter

registration law to be nonmandatory for voters wishing to cast a (provisional)

ballot, in effect adopting the procedural vision of provisional voting, see supra note

18. Indeed this seems to be the dissent’s understanding of Congress’s intent

behind this provision. See post at 7 n.11. But an equally plausible textual

39
interpretation that is more consistent with congressional intent evidenced by the

rest of HAVA is that by the term “eligible under State law,” Congress intended to

incorporate state law on the issue instead of creating a federal standard. In other

words, section 302(a) lets the states decide whether a voter who is not registered

but is otherwise eligible to vote should have her provisional ballot counted

anyway. Cf. Sandusky County Democratic Party v. Blackwell, 387 F.3d 565, 576

(6th Cir. 2004) (discussing state law that may permit voters to cast provisional

ballots outside of their registered precincts). Thus, under HAVA section 302,

states can still choose whether they will effectively waive the registration

requirement for voters casting provisional ballots. Florida has chosen not to do so,

see Fla. Stat. § 97.041(1)(a)(5); id. at § 97.041(1)(b)(3), and that decision conflicts

with neither section 302(a) nor with section 303(b)(2)(B) of HAVA.19

It is appropriate now to look through a wider lens, lest we miss the forest of

Congress’s intent for the trees of HAVA’s clumsy subsections and clauses.

Plaintiffs’ preemption argument comes down to the claim that HAVA presents a

19
Under the dissent’s interpretation of section 302(a), there would be no reason for
Congress to include the requirement that the voter affirm that she “is a registered voter” since
anyone eligible to register but who did not successfully register could still cast a provisional
ballot. This interpretation greatly expands provisional voting beyond the group of voters it was
intended to protect, namely those who had successfully registered but were still somehow left off
the rolls. The provisional voters envisioned by the dissent would have already received notice
that their applications were incomplete and that they are consequently not registered, making
them ineligible to invoke section 302(a).

40
fixed federal standard for the identification requirements that states may impose on

individual voters, and that any state standard more demanding or burdensome must

give way. Subsection 6 is and was intended to be such an identity verification

provision that is unquestionably more demanding and less flexible than the

alternative methods of identity verification provided by HAVA. The question

remains whether Subsection 6 sufficiently impedes HAVA’s objectives as to be

preempted by it. See Gade v. Nat’l Solid Wastes Mgmt. Ass’n, 505 U.S. 88, 98,

112 S. Ct. 2374, 2383 120 L. Ed. 2d 73 (1992) (“[The] ultimate task in any

pre-emption case is to determine whether state regulation is consistent with the

structure and purpose of the statute as a whole.”). Plaintiffs argue that HAVA’s

standards for voter identification are in effect the national maximum (and

presumably minimum as well) that any state may impose on voters.

Reading HAVA Title III as a whole, we are not convinced that its objectives

are to federalize voter identification standards. First, at multiple points throughout

the statute, HAVA dynamically incorporates state law requirements instead of

promulgating national standards. See 42 U.S.C. § 15482(a)(4);

§ 15483(a)(5)(A)(iii); § 15484; § 15485. Repeatedly adapting state laws does not

reflect an intent to prescribe a uniform national standard in the general legislative

scheme. Second, section 304 of HAVA states explicitly that “[t]he requirements

41
established by this subchapter are minimum requirements.” Id. § 15484. Plaintiffs

point out that the section goes on to say that stricter state requirements for “election

technology and administration” cannot be “inconsistent with the Federal

requirements.” Id. Although this congressional hedge means that HAVA section

304 is not a silver bullet for the Secretary’s position, it also throws some doubt on

plaintiffs’ claim that HAVA evinces a uniform national voter identification policy

as it clearly contemplates the existence of requirements more restrictive than the

federal minimum. As discussed above, plaintiffs have been unable to show how

Subsection 6 is inconsistent with any of the specific “requirements” of HAVA.

Their argument that it is inconsistent with some more nebulous conception of

HAVA’s objective fails once we recognize that on issues relating to voter

registration and identification not specifically addressed by HAVA, Congress

essentially punted to the states.

Third, if HAVA were intended to preempt all state laws like Subsection 6,

then we would expect to see a more comprehensive regulation of voter registration

and identification. Instead, what we actually have in HAVA section 303(b) is a

provision covering only mail-in registrants. There is nothing at all in the statute

that discusses the requirements and procedures for establishing eligibility and

identity of in-person registrants. Thus, so far as the specific requirements of

42
HAVA section 303(b) are concerned, we must conclude that Congress left it

entirely up to the states to prescribe the requirements for in-person registrants.

Under plaintiffs’ own interpretation, section 303(b) would preempt Subsection 6 as

applied to mail-in registrants whose Social Security and drivers’ license numbers

failed to match, but not as applied to in-person registrants who had the same

problem. Yet this would mean that section 303(b) would be more protective of

mail-in registrants – the very group upon whom Congress imposed additional

federal identification requirements to counteract greater perceived risks of

impersonation fraud – than of in-person registrants in states like Florida. If

Congress had wanted the verification methods described in section 303(b) to apply

to all voters nationally, it would have said so. If it had intended even less

demanding methods to apply nationally for in-person registrants, it would have

said that as well. The fact that the statute addresses only one specific subgroup of

registrants is more consistent with the Secretary’s interpretation of HAVA – that it

created some minimum verification procedures for one specific group where

concerns of fraud were particularly high but otherwise left the states free to draw

up their own voter identification measures.

V.

We next consider whether Subsection 6 conflicts with § 1971(a) of the Civil

43
Rights Act.20 As with the analysis of HAVA, the task with § 1971(a) is

determining whether Subsection 6 stands as an obstacle to the objectives of the

federal statute. We conclude that it does not.

Section 1971(a)(2)(B) was originally enacted as part of Title I of the Civil

Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. 88-352, § 101, 78 Stat. 241. The measure was at the

time the latest entry in a spurt of federal enforcement of voting rights after a long

slumber following syncopated efforts during Reconstruction. Statutes enacted in

1870, 1871, 1957, and 1960 had all been unsuccessful attempts to counteract state

and local government tactics of using, among other things, burdensome registration

requirements to disenfranchise African-Americans. See Condon v. Reno, 913 F.

Supp. 946, 949-50 (D.S.C. 1995). This latest addition to federal law was

“necessary to sweep away such tactics as disqualifying an applicant who failed to

list the exact number of months and days in his age.” Id. at 950. Such trivial

information served no purpose other than as a means of inducing voter-generated

errors that could be used to justify rejecting applicants.

The requirements of Subsection 6 are, of course, not trivial or irrelevant in

20
The relevant portion of the statute reads:
(2) No person acting under color of state law shall–
(B) deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or
omission on any record or paper relating to any application [or] registration . . . if such
error or omission is not material in determining whether [the] individual is qualified
under State law to vote in such election.
42 U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(B).

44
the way that the specific kinds of information requests targeted by Congress in

enacting § 1971(a)(2)(B) were trivial. Although Subsection 6 does not present a

paradigmatic violation of § 1971(a)(2)(B), we recognize that Congress in

combating specific evils might choose a broader remedy. See Pa. Dep’t of Corrs.

v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 118 S. Ct. 1952, 1956, 141 L. Ed. 2d 215 (1998); N.H.

Motor Transp. Ass'n v. Rowe, 448 F.3d 66, 77 (1st Cir. 2006). The text of the

resulting statute, and not the historically motivating examples of intentional and

overt racial discrimination, is thus the appropriate starting point of inquiry in

discerning congressional intent.

The text of § 1971(a)(2)(B) prohibits denying the right to vote based on

errors or omissions that are not material in determining voter eligibility. See 42

U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(B). The term “material” not surprisingly signifies different

degrees of importance in different legal contexts. In constitutionalized criminal

procedure, exculpatory evidence is “material only if there is a reasonable

probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the

proceeding would have been different.” United States v, Bagley, 473 U.S. 667,

682, 105 S. Ct. 3375, 3383, 87 L. Ed. 2d 481 (1985). In the voluminous

jurisprudence of section 10b of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act and Rule 10b-5,

a misrepresentation or omission is material if and only if there is a “substantial

45
likelihood that the disclosure of the omitted fact would have been viewed by the

reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information

made available.” TSC Indus., Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U.S. 438, 449, 96 S. Ct.

2126, 2132, 48 L. Ed. 2d 757 (1976).

However, in the federal criminal mail and wire fraud context, materiality

seems to take on a much lower evidentiary threshold, for “a false statement is

material if it has a natural tendency to influence, or is capable of influencing, the

decision of the decisionmaking body to which it was addressed.” United States v.

Gray, 367 F.3d 1263, 1272 n.19 (11th Cir. 2004) (quoting Neder v. United States,

527 U.S. 1, 15, 119 S. Ct. 1827, 1837, 144 L. Ed. 2d 35 (1999) (internal quotation

marks omitted)). Similarly, in the context of sentencing range enhancements for

concealing evidence under the federal Sentencing Guidelines, we have observed

that the threshold for materiality is “conspicuously low,” such that material

information is “information that, if believed, would tend to influence or affect the

issue under determination.” United States v. Dedeker, 961 F.2d 164, 167 (11th

Cir. 1992) (quoting U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, comment. (n. 5) (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

Roughly speaking, there appears to be two kinds of “materiality,” one

similar to minimal relevance and the other closer to outcome-determinative. If

46
materiality in the context of § 1971(a)(2)(B) means minimal relevance, then it is

clear that a failure to match the information required under Subsection 6 is

“material” to determining voter eligibility. An application that fails to match up

the identification numbers tends to make it more likely that the applicant is not a

qualified voter than if the numbers had matched.

If materiality means something more like outcome-determinative, then the

Secretary would have to meet a higher burden in demonstrating that the

information required to make a match is necessary or sufficient, along with other

information available, to determining eligibility. Fortunately for the Secretary,

Congress has already resolved this potentially difficult issue in his favor by

enacting HAVA section 303(a). The fact that HAVA section 303(a) requires states

to obtain the applicant’s identification numbers before accepting a registration

application and also to “determine whether the information provided . . . is

sufficient to meet [that] requirement[]” indicates that Congress deemed the

identification numbers material to determining eligibility to register and to vote.21

42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(iii). Moreover, the section 303(a)(5) issues this

21
To be sure, HAVA also does not require that states authenticate these numbers by
matching them against existing databases. It is explicit that states are to make determinations of
validity in accordance with state law. States are therefore free to accept the numbers provided
on application form, which at least in Florida are completed with an oath or affirmation under
penalty of perjury, as self-authenticating. This does not alter the materiality of the information
itself.

47
directive to states “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” which of course

includes the temporally prior § 1971(a)(2)(B). See 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(i).

We doubt that Congress would mandate the gathering of information – indeed, that

it would make that a precondition for accepting registration application – that it

also deems immaterial. Read together, HAVA section 303(a) removes specific

kinds of information from § 1971(a)’s domain by making those kinds of

information automatically material.22

Plaintiffs argue that whether or not the underlying information sought by the

registration is material, an error caused by a typo cannot be material because it

does not reflect the absence of any actual, substantive element that makes the

applicant ineligible. The mistaken premise in this argument is that the

materiality provision refers to the nature of the error rather than the nature of the

underlying information requested. If plaintiffs were correct and materiality refers

22
In a way, this issue in this case is the mirror image of the one decided in Schwier v.
Cox, 412 F. Supp. 2d 1266 (N.D. Ga. 2005), aff’d 439 F.3d 1285 (11th Cir. 2006). Schwier
involved a challenge to Georgia’s Voter Registration Form, which had required the plaintiff
applicants to disclose their full Social Security numbers to be verified. The district court held,
and we affirmed, that the Georgia law conflicted with § 1971(a)(2)(B)’s materiality provision
because Congress had made it illegal in a different statute, section 7(b) of the Privacy Act, 5
U.S.C. § 552a (note), to mandate the disclosure of one’s complete Social Security number
without providing certain information and notice to the individual. See Schwier, 412 F. Supp. 2d
at 1274-75. Because the Georgia registration form ran afoul of the section 7(b) of the Privacy
Act, the Social Security number was per se immaterial under § 1971(a)(2)(B). Here, because
Congress required the identification numbers to be on voter registration applications, they are
per se material under § 1971(a)(2)(B).

48
to the fact of the error itself, then no error would ever be material because an error

by definition mistakenly and incorrectly represents the underlying substantive

element of eligibility. A more sound interpretation of § 1971(a)(2)(B) asks

whether, accepting the error as true and correct, the information contained in the

error is material to determining the eligibility of the applicant. As discussed above,

HAVA makes that information material.23

Ultimately, the thrust of plaintiffs’ argument is not that the information

sought by HAVA and Subsection 6 are immaterial, but that the likelihood of error

combined with the consequences are unjustifiably burdensome on the applicant in

light of other available and more error-tolerant ways of verifying identity, and in

light of the overall balance of effects on social utility. That is an argument for

another day. Section 1971(a)(2)(B) does not establish a least-restrictive-alternative

test for voter registration applications in the plain text of the statute, and we are

23
The standard that the dissent proposes, that an error is immaterial if it would not
“preclude a reasonable election official from identifying the applicant,” post at 15, works only
when the applicant has brought it to the election official’s attention that the mismatch is in fact
an error by presenting proof of her identity and eligibility. Without this additional identifying
information, such as a copy of the applicant’s driver’s license, it would be impossible to tell
whether the applicant’s error was major, minor, or indeed an error at all (as opposed to an actual
attempt at fraudulently registering). However, with this additional information, the election
official will always be able to verify identity of the applicant. It is this additional information
exclusively – and not the degree to which that new information deviates from the information on
the registration application form, or the “nature of the error,” post at 15 – that enables the
election official to ascertain the identity of the voter. Thus, under this approach no error can
ever be material.

49
unable to discern the imposition that tests as an objective of the statute. Finding no

conflict between Subsection 6 and § 1971(a)(2)(B) of the Civil Rights Act, we

conclude that the Florida law is not preempted.

V.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s decision that

plaintiffs have standing to prosecute this lawsuit, and we reverse its decision

granting plaintiffs a preliminary injunction. The case is remanded for further

proceedings not inconsistent herewith.

SO ORDERED.

50
BARKETT, Circuit Judge, CONCURRING in part, DISSENTING in part:

I agree with the majority that Plaintiffs have standing in this case. However,

I dissent from the majority’s determination that Plaintiffs are not entitled to a

preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Florida Statutes § 97.053(6)

(“Subsection 6”), which impermissibly disenfranchises Florida citizens.

In 2006, Florida added a provision to its voter registration process,

Subsection 6,1 that requires “matching” a voter’s driver’s license or social security

number on his or her application to an official database.2 Florida and the majority

read this provision to say that the match from the official database must be, not to

the actual and valid driver’s license or social security card, but to the name and

number placed on the registration application. Under the majority’s interpretation

of this provision, regardless of an applicant’s proof of eligibility, any provisional

vote legitimately cast in an election will not be counted if an applicant’s name or

number is erroneously copied onto the application form. An individual’s ability to

1
Only three other states currently have schemes similar to Subsection 6. Most states that
adopted matching schemes have done away with them. For example, after implementing
matching schemes, several states—including Pennsylvania, California, and
Maryland—abandoned those registration systems after thousands of eligible voters were being
denied the right to vote. See, e.g., Cal. Code Regs. tit. 2, §§ 20108.38(c), 20108.65(e),
20108.70(c), 20108.71; Md. Code Regs. §§ 33.05.04.04(A)(3), (B)(3)–(4), 33.05.04.05(C)(5). In
Washington State, a district court recently enjoined the state government from enforcing a
similar matching scheme. See Wash. Ass’n of Churches v. Reed, 492 F. Supp. 2d 1264 (W.D.
Wash. 2006).
2
This requirement, however, applies only to new voters, not to those already registered
prior to the enactment of Subsection 6, treating new voters and “old” voters differently.

51
cast a provisional ballot therefore turns not on whether he or she is eligible to vote,

but on whether the name or number on the registration application contains a

mistake.

Such a requirement for voting violates the Help America Vote Act of 2002

(“HAVA”), the Voting Rights Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments of

the Constitution. Moreover, I cannot believe that this interpretation was intended

by the Florida legislature. It is inconceivable that a state would intend that a

typographical or transpositional error on a registration application could not be

corrected through irrefutable proof of a valid driver’s license or social security card

to permit a Florida citizen’s vote to be counted. The right to vote is a

“fundamental matter in a free and democratic society.” Reynolds v. Sims, 377

U.S. 533, 561–62 (1964), and pursuant to Subsection 6, Florida has impermissibly

deprived a class of over 14,000 citizens3—the vast majority of whom are

minorities4—that fundamental right.

3
Between the effective date of Subsection 6—i.e., January 1, 2006—and October 10,
2007, at least 14,326 Florida citizens were excluded from the Florida registration list because of
non-verification. As of the November 2006 general election, that number was 12,804.
4
For example, African-Americans make up 13% of the applicant pool, but 26% of the
unmatched voter pool. Similarly, Hispanic-Americans comprise 15% of the applicant pool, but
39% of the unmatched voter pool. To show the sharp contrast and illustrate how Subsection 6
affects minorities to a much larger extent, whites make up 66% of the applicant pool but only
17% of the unmatched voter pool. Because minority communities often have names that are
unfamiliar to data-entry processors, and because they are more likely than whites to have
hyphenated or compound names, the database entries are more likely to not match for minorities.

52
 I. Florida’s “Matching” Requirement5

For a voter registration application to be “complete,”6 an applicant must not

only satisfy the qualifications to register to vote,7 but the state must also match

“[t]he applicant’s . . . driver’s license number” or “the last four digits of the

applicant’s social security number”8 to the database of either the Florida

Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (“DHSMV”) or the Social

Security Administration (“SSA”). Fla. Stat. § 97.053(5)(a)–(b), (6). An

“incomplete” application because of non-matching will be rejected and the

5
The matching scheme in itself is problematic because of the numerous administrative
and technological barriers, such as computer glitches or human error that make the possibility of
non-matches for qualified voters a strong possibility. However, I focus this dissent, primarily
the statutory sections, on the fact that if a mistake is made by an applicant who then votes
provisionally, that vote will never be counted even if the applicant provides valid
documentation—either a driver’s license or social security card—which clearly verifies the
voter’s identity. Most other states do not have this problem. For example, in California, if an
applicant cannot be matched to a database but is otherwise eligible to vote, the state can assign
that applicant a unique identifying number. Cf. Cal. Code Regs. tit. 2, §§ 20108.38(c),
20108.65(e), 20108.70(c), 20108.71
6
Under Florida law, “[a] voter registration application is complete and becomes the
official voter registration record of that applicant when all information necessary to establish the
applicant’s eligibility pursuant to s. 97.041 is received by a voter registration official and
verified pursuant to [Subsection 6].” Fla. Stat. § 97.053(2).
7
Section 97.041 sets forth the “qualifications to register to vote,” which include that a
person (1) must be at least eighteen years of age, (2) is a U.S. citizen, (3) is a legal resident of
Florida, (4) is a legal resident of the county in which they seek to register, (5) has not been
adjudicated mentally incapacitated, and (6) has not been convicted as a felon. Id. § 97.041.
8
An applicant may also provide an identification number from a Florida identification
card issued pursuant to Florida Statutes § 322.051. Throughout this dissent, I shall refer to
“driver’s license numbers” for both driver’s license numbers as well as identification card
numbers. Driver’s license numbers and social security numbers shall collectively be referred to
as “identifying numbers,” “applicants’ numbers,” or “numbers.”

53
applicant’s name will not be placed on the voter rolls prepared for election day.

However, such an applicant could vote provisionally, the validity of that vote being

subject to the applicant correctly “completing” her application within two days

following an election.9

The state and the majority take the position that such a provisional ballot

may be counted only if the state made the mistake in the matching process but not

if that very same mistake was made by the applicant. If an election official

transposes two numbers or omits a letter, hyphen, or suffix from a name on a

registration application when entering that information into the state’s voter

database, resulting in a non-match with either the DHSMV or SSA database, that

applicant’s provisional ballot will be counted upon presentation of a valid driver’s

9
Although a voter could cure her non-match prior to the registration book-closing
deadline, see Fla. Stat. § 97.052, this is not always possible, because voters often receive notices
of “incomplete” applications after the book-closing deadline. Furthermore, for a voter who
registers, for example, on the last day before the book-closing deadline and the state determines
that her application is unmatched, there is no way in which she could cure her non-match prior to
the book-closing deadline. In Florida, the book-closing deadline is on the twenty-ninth day
before an election. See id. § 97.055. For example, the book-closing deadline for the January 28,
2008 presidential preference primary was December 29, 2007.
The applicant was previously given three days to verify the authenticity of her
application but as part of the 2007 amendment to Subsection 6 (s. 13, ch. 2007-30), the Florida
legislature substituted “second day” for “third day,” now giving an applicant only forty-eight
hours to provide documentation matching her application information. This amendment took
effect on January 1, 2008. The state has sought preclearance of this amendment with the U.S.
Attorney General. However, on January 23, 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice informed the
state that because the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida had enjoined
enforcement of Subsection 6, the proposed change was not ripe for review by the U.S. Attorney
General.

54
license or social security card. Id. § 97.053(6). However, if the applicant makes

the very same mistake on her application, then no matter what irrefutable proof she

provides of her identity and eligibility to vote, including a valid driver’s license or

social security card, her provisional ballot will never be counted.

This inconsistency in the treatment of provisional ballots is compounded by

the fact that there is no provision under Florida law that addresses disputes

regarding whether the mistake was made by the applicant or by an election official.

For example, an applicant may well argue that her application is correct, but that an

election official misread the application by seeing a “7 ” where the applicant wrote

the number “1,” or by construing the number “5” as the letter “S.” 10

For the reasons more fully explained below, permitting Florida to

disenfranchise voters under this scheme violates both federal law and the

Constitution.

II. Subsection 6 Conflicts With HAVA.

As a result of the voting difficulties experienced during the 2000 presidential

election, Congress passed HAVA in order to make sweeping reforms to our

10
As an additional example, if a blind or otherwise physically-disabled applicant needs
the assistance of an election official in filling out her application and an error results on her
application, are we to assume that the applicant gave the election official an incorrect sequence
of numbers or that the election official simply misunderstood the applicant in transposing two
numbers on her application?

55
nation’s voting processes, including states’ registration processes. See 42 U.S.C.

§ 15301 et seq. Any method used by a state in conducting voter registration must

now take into account HAVA’s goals in promoting methods of voting and

administering elections which are “the most convenient, accessible, and easy to use

for voters” and which are “nondiscriminatory and afford each registered and

eligible voter an equal opportunity to vote and have that vote counted.” Id.

§ 15381(a)(1) & (3), (b)(3) (emphasis added).

Among the methods utilized to promote these goals, Section 302 of HAVA

provides for the casting of provisional ballots. See id. § 15482. Under Section

303(b)(2)(B) (the “fail-safe voting” provision), an individual who does not meet

the identification requirements for voting in-person or by mail under Section

303(b)(2)(A) may cast a provisional ballot in accordance with Section 302(a). Id.

§ 15483(b)(2)(A)–(B). If an individual does not appear on a registration list or an

election official determines that she is not eligible to vote, Section 302(a) provides

that an individual “shall be permitted to cast a provisional ballot” if she affirms to

an election official that she is a registered and eligible voter. Id. § 15482(a)(2)(A)–

(B). This must simply mean that the voter believes herself to have adequately

registered. Thereafter, an election official must determine only that the individual

is “eligible under State law” to vote, in which case her provisional ballot will be

56
counted. Id. § 15482(a)(4).11 The intent behind this section was to permit voters to

prove within a reasonable time after an election that they are, in fact, eligible voters

and the state’s initial view to the contrary was erroneous.

However, Subsection 6 completely eviscerates provisional balloting for a

group of otherwise eligible voters who make a minor mistake on their registration

applications.12 Subsection 6 permits voters to cast a provisional ballot which will

be counted only if applicants present evidence—their driver’s license or social

security card—which verifies the number “provided on [their] application,” Fla.

Stat. § 97.053(6) (emphasis added). This is impossible if an applicant has made a

minor mistake in writing her name or number on her application. An actual, valid

11
Nowhere in that subsection is there a requirement that the election official verify that
the applicant is registered to vote. The majority concedes that this is a “plausible” interpretation
of Section 302(a) but chooses to interpret HAVA differently, thereby allowing Florida’s
matching scheme under Subsection 6. Given the full purposes of HAVA and the constitutional
problems raised by such an interpretation, which the majority ignores, its analysis of provisional
balloting under HAVA is much too narrow and incomplete.
The majority takes the position that there would be no reason to have a voter affirm that
she “is a registered voter” if anyone eligible to register but who was not successful in registering
can still cast a provisional ballot. (Maj. Op. at 40 n.19.) The majority fails to take into account
voter registration processes, where voters all too often do not receive the requisite notice to
know whether they have been successfully registered and will go to the polls believing
themselves registered to vote. The affirmation requirement under Section 302(a) is distinct from
the verification process. It requires that the voter simply claim that she believes herself to be
registered, not that the state has in fact registered her to vote.
12
I do not address the other two arguments related to HAVA, that (1) Subsection 6
conflicts with Section 303(b)(3)(B) of HAVA and (2) that Subsection 6 violates the purpose and
meaning behind HAVA’s “Computerized Statewide Voter Registration List Requirements.”
While I think these claims have merit, as I noted earlier, the greatest conflict between HAVA
and Subsection 6 is the effacement of provisional balloting for a certain group of otherwise
eligible voters.

57
driver’s license or social security number will never match the registration

application upon which two numbers might have been transposed, or upon which a

letter or hyphen might have been inadvertently omitted from a name. According to

the state, it is the match itself, not the validity of the requested information, that is

determinative of a vote being counted. Thus, when an applicant makes a minor

mistake on her registration application, the majority says that Florida is free to

disregard HAVA’s provisions for provisional balloting. This view nullifies

provisional balloting for those voters who are clearly eligible but for a minor error

on their applications.

As the majority notes, “[t]he question remains whether Subsection 6

sufficiently impedes HAVA’s objectives as to be preempted by it.” (Maj. Op. at

41.) For any court, “[the] ultimate task in any pre-emption case is to determine

whether state regulation is consistent with the structure and purpose of the statute

as a whole.” Gade v. Nat’l Solid Wastes Mgmt. Ass’n, 505 U.S. 88, 98 (1992). If

a challenged state law “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution

of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,” then it is preempted by federal

law. Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 66–67 (1941); Pharm. Research & Mfrs.

of America v. Meadows, 304 F.3d 1197, 1205 (11th Cir. 2002).13 In determining

13
Contrary to the state’s argument, there is no presumption against preemption. As this
court has stated, “[w]hen considering implied preemption, no presumption against preemption

58
what is a “sufficient obstacle,” we look to the federal statute as a whole and

identify its purpose and intended effects. Crosby v. Nat’l Foreign Trade Council,

530 U.S. 363, 373 (2000).14

The majority reads HAVA as authorizing the administrative matching of

numbers and letters as a precondition to registration. This misreading clearly

conflicts with HAVA’s objectives of promoting accessible and non-discriminatory

methods of voting that minimize voter disenfranchisement. These objectives

preclude states from using the identification-verification process as a basis for

excluding actually qualified voters. While I certainly agree that states have the

right to “determine whether the information provided by an individual is sufficient

to meet the requirements [for voter registration under HAVA], in accordance with

State law,” see 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5)(A)(iii), they cannot do so in a way that

exists.” Irving v. Mazda Motor Corp., 136 F.3d 764, 769 (11th Cir. 1998). “Under the
Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution, the relative importance to the State of its own law
is not material when there is a conflict with a valid federal law, for any state law, however
clearly within a State’s acknowledged power, which interferes with or is contrary to federal law,
must yield.” Lewis v. Brunswick Corp., 107 F.3d 1494, 1502 (11th Cir. 1997) (internal
quotation marks omitted) (citing Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131, 138 (1988)).
14
“For when the question is whether a Federal act overrides a state law, the entire scheme
of the statute must of course be considered and that which needs must be implied is of no less
force than that which is expressed. If the purpose of the act cannot otherwise be
accomplished—if its operation within its chosen field else must be frustrated and its provisions
be refused their natural effect—the state law must yield to the regulation of Congress within the
sphere of its delegated power.” Savage v. Jones, 225 U.S. 501, 533 (1912), quoted in Crosby,
530 U.S. at 373.

59
would prevent a clearly and undisputedly eligible voter from having her vote

counted.

Although the majority states that we should look at HAVA through a “wider

lens” so that we do not overlook Congress’ intent in enacting HAVA at the

expense of “HAVA’s clumsy subsections and clauses” (Maj. Op. at 40), the

majority fails to do what it says: to specifically look at Subsection 6 in light of

HAVA’s purposes. Instead, the majority begs the question by holding that

Subsection 6 is permissible because Congress did not intend to prescribe uniform

national standards for both voter registration and identification. (See id. at 42–44.)

The majority reasons that because Congress did not impose uniform national

standards for voter registration when it enacted HAVA, the implication is that

Congress left room for states to “supplement” HAVA’s provisions with laws such

as Subsection 6. (See id. at 31–32 (citing Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331

U.S. 218, 230 (1947)); see also id. at 42–44.) But HAVA does not need to

prescribe uniform national standards for voter registration in order for HAVA to

preempt Subsection 6.15 Although not preempting all state registration and

15
The majority argues that because Section 303(b) of HAVA only applies to mail-in
registrants, Congress left it “entirely” up to the states to decide what the requirements for in-
person registrants should be. (Maj. Op. at 42–43.) That cannot be the case. A state is not free to
enact whatever in-person, or mail-in, registration laws it wants without regard for the underlying
purposes of HAVA as well as any provision of HAVA which may conflict with a state’s specific
choice of registration laws.

60
identification laws, under the doctrine of conflict preemption, HAVA will preempt

those state laws that act as “obstacle[s] to the accomplishment and execution of the

full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Hines, 312 U.S. at 66–67 (emphasis

added). The Supreme Court was explicit when it stated that if there is “any

conflict” with a federal statute, the state law in question is preempted. Crosby, 530

U.S. at 372 (emphasis added) (citing California v. ARC Am. Corp., 490 U.S. 93,

101 (1989)). Subsection 6 is such a law, and thus, preempted by HAVA.

Furthermore, as explained later herein, by interpreting HAVA as allowing

Florida to make administrative matching and verification a precondition of

eligibility, Subsection 6 fails to pass constitutional muster. Given the choice

between two interpretations of a federal statute, we should choose the one that does

not deprive citizens of their fundamental constitutional rights. If we are to

seriously strive in upholding the integrity of elections, citizens must be given at a

bare minimum a fair opportunity to vote. The state’s concern with fraud is not a

one-way street: not only must the government make sure that individuals are not

voting fraudulently, but the government must not fraudulently deprive its citizens

of their lawful right to vote. With no evidence of voter fraud in Florida, and with

the undisputed fact that over 14,000 individuals to date have been denied their

right to vote simply because their applications have not been administratively

61
matched, even though they may be able to prove their eligibility to vote,

Subsection 6 conflicts with HAVA and is preempted by it.

III. Subsection 6 Violates the Voting Rights Act.

Florida’s matching scheme also violates the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”).

The VRA, “and its grant of authority to the federal courts to uncover official

efforts to abridge minorities’ right to vote, has been of vital importance in

eradicating invidious discrimination from the electoral process.” Miller v.

Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 927 (1995). Specifically, the VRA provides that no person

shall be denied the right to vote “because of an error or omission on any record or

paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if

such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is

qualified under State law to vote in such election.” 42 U.S.C. § 1971(a)(2)(B).16

This provision—known as the “materiality provision”—was created “to

eliminate practices that could encumber an individual’s ability to register to vote.”

Friedman v. Snipes, 345 F. Supp. 2d 1356, 1371 (S.D. Fla. 2004); see also McKay

v. Altobello, No. 96-3458, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16651, at *3 (E.D. La. Oct. 31,

16
For purposes of § 1971, “vote” includes “all action necessary to make a vote effective
including, but not limited to, registration or other action required by State law prerequisite to
voting, casting a ballot, and having such ballot counted and included in the appropriate totals of
votes cast with respect to candidates for public office and propositions for which votes are
received in an election.” 42 U.S.C. § 1971(e).

62
1996) (The materiality provision “is an anti-discrimination statute designed to

eliminate the discriminatory practices of registrars through arbitrary enforcement

of registration requirements. It addresses errors and accidental omissions in

registration, not the intentional refusal to provide required information.”); Condon

v. Reno, 913 F. Supp. 946, 949 (D.S.C. 1995) (noting that Congress enacted the

VRA to “deal with the problem of registering as a deterrent to voting”).

Although the majority acknowledges that Congress enacted the VRA as a

means of combating “burdensome [state] registration requirements to

disenfranchise African-Americans,” its test of “materiality” pays only lip-service

to, and would frustrate, that very purpose. (Maj. Op. at 43–45.)

To determine whether an error is material, the majority’s test ignores the

nature of the error and asks solely whether the underlying information containing

the error is relevant in determining an applicant’s eligibility to vote. I agree that

this is a necessary first step. If the information is not material in determining the

eligibility of the applicant, it follows that any error or omission in reporting that

information necessarily would not be material and there would be no need for

further analysis. See, e.g., Schwier v. Cox, 439 F.3d 1285, 1286 (11th Cir. 2006).

But Congress recognized in passing the VRA that discriminatory registration

requirements are more sophisticated and pernicious than simply asking applicants

63
for immaterial information. Its concern was not merely with overtly discriminatory

requirements that ask for irrelevant information, but also with requirements that

ask for relevant information but disproportionately penalize applicants for trivial

mistakes.

For example, the court in Condon recognized that Congress intended the

VRA to eliminate the practice of disqualifying applicants who make mistakes

when asked to “list the exact number of months and days in [their] age.” 913 F.

Supp. at 950. The majority recognizes that Congress sought to end such insidious

practices, (see Maj. Op. at 44), but under its test for materiality, it would have to

find the practice discussed in Condon permissible because the underlying

substantive information sought—the age of the applicant—is material in

determining whether the applicant is eligible. As this application of the majority’s

test makes clear, it is insufficient to look solely at the “nature of the underlying

information requested,” (id. at 48), to determine the materiality of an error or

omission.

Therefore, even taking as true the majority’s contention that an applicant’s

driver’s license or social security number is per se material because of HAVA,

(which I do not),17 that fact alone does not end the materiality inquiry in assessing

17
I do not believe this to be the case as HAVA does not require states to verify an
applicant’s identifying number. If a state is not required to verify an applicant’s identifying

64
errors under Florida’s matching scheme. The nature of the error must also be

considered. Under Florida’s scheme, an applicant with a hyphenated last name

would have her application denied if the databases did not include the hyphen;

similarly, an applicant who failed to include a suffix such as “Jr.” or “Sr.” would

have his application denied. Even though the information sought is clearly

relevant, these small inconsistencies would not preclude a reasonable election

official from identifying the applicant and, thus, should not be considered either a

material error or omission.18 Similarly, the accidental transposition of two

number, then HAVA does not automatically make such information material because an
individual in a state without a matching scheme could provide her driver’s license or social
security number and even though she may have transposed two numbers of her application, that
immaterial error would not prevent her from voting in that state. Furthermore, the information
cannot be per se material because HAVA provides for the assignment of a unique identifying
number, which does not have to be matched, for those individuals who do not have a driver’s
license or social security number. The information also cannot be per se material if a state such
as North Dakota is allowed to hold federal elections without any registration requirements.
18
The majority argues that this standard—that an error is immaterial if it does not
preclude a reasonable election official from identifying the applicant—only works if the
applicant presents proof of her identity or eligibility. (Maj. Op. at 49 n.23.) This is simply not
true. If all of an applicant’s registration information matches a database but for a missing
hyphen, this minor error would not preclude a reasonable election official from determining that
a voter is eligible based solely on the information provided on the application itself, not based on
the applicant presenting additional identifying information. Additionally, the majority argues no
error could ever be material if the nature of the error is considered because an election official
will always be able to verify the identity of an applicant if she presents additional identifying
information. (Id.) This also misconstrues the inquiry. There are certain errors that are of
sufficient magnitude that a reasonable election official would not be able to verify an applicant’s
eligibility regardless of the additional identifying information provided. For example, if an
unmatched applicant wrote “José Lopez” as his name on his application but later presented
identifying information with the name “Juan Lobo,” a reasonable election official would not be
able to determine the applicant’s eligibility. The materiality of this error, or the degree to which
the new information deviates from the information on the application, is of such magnitude that
the applicant could not be registered based simply on the additional identifying information,

65
numbers from a driver’s license or social security number is not a material error

under the VRA.19 These are the very mistakes that Congress intended to prevent

states from using as “burdensome” barriers to registration.

Furthermore, the state’s own practices confirm that a minor error on an

application, in and of itself, is not immutably material. At oral argument, the state

admitted that when it makes similar mistakes, applicants are allowed to cure those

mistakes after casting a provisional ballot. Thus, if an applicant is able to correct

an error made by the state, a similar error made by a voter without a meaningful

opportunity to cure that error cannot be material in determining eligibility.

The VRA simply does not countenance the inhumanly strict precision

demanded by Florida’s matching scheme.

thereby ensuring that applicants are not fraudulently attempting to register.
19
The state argues that the materiality provision only applies to errors or omissions “on
any record or paper” whereas this case is only about errors in the treatment or processing of
voter registration applications. This argument is meritless. The state’s interpretation of the
materiality provision would lead to the absurd result that the state could commit an inordinate
number of errors and omissions and remain immune from challenge under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1971(a)(2)(B) because the errors or omissions did not occur on the application forms
themselves. Under this legal regime, the state would be free to treat and process applications
however it deemed appropriate, with no safeguards for voters under the materiality provision.
By confining the materiality provision to voter registration application forms, the state is seeking
to flout the goals behind the VRA, providing itself “an excuse to disqualify potential voters.”
Schwier, 340 F.3d at 1294. The materiality provision applies to errors or omissions on “any
record or paper.” Nowhere does the statute define “record or paper” as meaning only application
forms.

66
 IV. Subsection 6 Violates the U.S. Constitution.

Although I recognize that the constitutional questions were not decided

below, it is necessary to address them here because the majority’s reading of

HAVA and the VRA leaves Florida citizens without any statutory basis upon

which to contest the lawfulness of Subsection 6. While it is a “principle of judicial

restraint” that courts should “avoid reaching constitutional questions in advance of

the necessity of deciding them,” Lyng v. Nw. Indian Cemetery Protective Ass’n,

485 U.S. 439, 445 (1988), this principle does not dictate that constitutional

questions be avoided at all costs, but rather that a court address statutory questions

before constitutional ones. United States v. Odom, 252 F.3d 1289, 1293 (11th Cir.

2001). The district court did so, resolving the issue without implicating any

constitutional concerns.20 However, Florida’s matching scheme, as enacted and

implemented by the state and validated by the majority, violates both the Due

Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and places an

undue burden on the right to vote in violation of the First and Fourteenth

Amendments.21

20
The district court did not reach the merits of Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims because it
found the statutory claims sufficient to grant Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction.
However, the court found that Plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient to state constitutional claims
and therefore, denied the state’s motion to dismiss those claims.
21
The Fourteenth Amendment provides, in relevant part: “No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor

67
 A. Subsection 6 Violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.

When an election process “reache[s] the point of patent and fundamental

unfairness,” there is a due process violation. Roe v. Alabama, 43 F.3d 574, 580

(11th Cir. 1995) (citing Curry v. Baker, 802 F.2d 1302, 1315 (11th Cir. 1986)).

While there is no bright line in determining when an election process has reached

the level of “patent and fundamental unfairness,” this is not an “ordinary dispute

over the counting and marking of ballots” or a simple “deviation from absolute

accuracy.” See Curry, 802 F.2d at 1316. Rather, we are faced with a registration

system plagued by the inadequacy of notices sent to unmatched registrants, the

lack of adequate process to correct minor mistakes, and the outright refusal to

count provisional ballots because of minor mistakes. All of these critical problems

with Florida’s registration system render the election process under Subsection 6

patently and fundamentally unfair.

Under Florida’s matching scheme, Florida’s sixty-seven counties are free to

provide, and actually do provide, notices different in content and form to

applicants whose registration applications have been rejected. These notices to

unmatched applicants are wholly inadequate to ensure that voters are given a fair

shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Const. amend.
XIV, § 1.

68
opportunity to not only cast a ballot, but to have their ballot counted. As the

majority concedes, the notices sent to unmatched applicants are “generic,” simply

advising an applicant that she is not registered because her application was

“incomplete” or “incorrect.”

The “generic” notices do not tell applicants what is required to cure an

erroneous application. There is no explanation that the rejection was due, for

example, to an unmatched driver’s license or social security number. Nor is there

any notice at all that if an application containing an error made by the applicant is

not corrected before the book-closing date, the provisional ballot cast by the

applicant pursuant to HAVA and Subsection 6 will not be counted.

Moreover, the “generic” notices may not, and often do not, reach applicants

in the mail until it is too late to rectify any mistakes on their applications before the

book-closing deadline. Even if an applicant timely presents herself at an election

office with a passport or birth certificate in response to the notice that her

application is “incomplete,” her effort will have been to no avail. If she does not

have her driver’s license or social security card with her to match the name or

number on her application, her application will remain “incomplete” and she will

not be registered.22 Having to go to an election office is burdensome enough for

22
If applicants do not know what makes their applications “incomplete,” they may go to
the Supervisor of Elections’ office without the proper documentation to verify their applications.

69
most individuals who may not have the means to get to an election office or cannot

take the time from work to do so; an additional trip with the necessary

documentation is even more so.23

Even the state’s “Voter Registration” website, which is misleading, does not

provide adequate notice. The website does not provide voters with any notice

regarding Florida’s matching scheme.24 It does not once make mention of a

matching program, nor does it state that if a voter registration application is

“incomplete,” a notice will be mailed to the applicant.25 Furthermore, the website

Being permitted to fax or mail a copy of their documentation to verify their applications would
not solve the problem. An applicant might send a photocopy of her driver’s license when the
real problem was matching her social security number. The Supervisor of Elections’ office
might not even try to match the newly provided driver’s license number to the DHSMV database
because that was not the initial problem. Even if it does try, if the driver’s license was obtained
prior to the applicant getting married and changing her name, or if her driver’s license does not
include a hyphen whereas the application does, it will still not match. If the applicant receives a
second notice that is identical to the first, letting her know her application is “incomplete” or
“incorrect,” she will find herself in a vicious cycle of guessing as to what is wrong with her
application. This of course assumes that election officials send out a second notice and that there
is sufficient time to send out that second notice before the book-closing deadline.
23
The state contends that voters can fax or e-mail copies of the required evidence instead
of going to the Supervisor of Elections’ office. Plaintiffs, on the other hand, argue that the
notices do not contain a fax number or an e-mail address. Moreover, as noted above in footnote
21, faxing or mailing may not solve the problems arising from a “generic” notice that simply
says an application is “incomplete.”
24
See Division of Elections, Florida Department of State, Voter Registration: Voter
Registration Application, http://election.dos.state.fl.us/regtovote/regform.shtml (last visited Mar.
25, 2008).
25
The website simply states what will happen if an application is complete: “If your
application is complete and you are qualified as a voter, the Supervisor of Elections for your
respective county of residence will send you a voter information card. This card will serve as
official notification of your registration. If you do not receive your card within three weeks, or if

70
states that “[i]n order to register,” an applicant must provide her driver’s license

number or the last four digits of her social security number, which will “be used

only for voter registration purposes,” and not as a determinant of an applicant’s

eligibility.26 A state registration system, the specifics of which are not explicitly

made known to potential voters, that leaves potential voters in the dark as to its

effect on a voter’s eligibility and that fails to give voters a fair opportunity to cure

minor mistakes, is fundamentally unfair and violative of the Due Process Clause of

the Fourteenth Amendment.

B. Subsection 6 Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.

Subsection 6 also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment. When a state adopts an electoral system, the Equal Protection Clause

of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees qualified voters a substantive right to

participate equally with other qualified voters in the electoral process. Reynolds v.

Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 566 (1964); see also Harper v. Va. Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S.

663, 665 (1966). In any state-adopted electoral scheme, “[t]he right to vote is

you have any questions regarding your registration, please call your county Supervisor of
Elections.” Id.
26
Just above this language, the website lists the qualifications to become a registered
voter in Florida, as enumerated under Florida Statutes § 97.041, a provision which does not
mention the filing of a mistake-free application as a prerequisite to have an applicant’s vote
counted. Id.

71
protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection

applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote

on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value

one person’s vote over that of another.” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, 104–05

(2000); see also Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109, 124 (1986) (noting that

“everyone [has] the right to vote and to have his vote counted”).

Having granted its citizens the right to vote, Florida must not only allow

qualified voters to participate equally in elections, it must also ensure that qualified

voters are given an equal opportunity to participate in elections. Holt Civic Club v.

Tuscaloosa, 439 U.S. 60, 81 (1978) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (quoting Hadley v.

Junior Coll. Dist., 397 U.S. 50, 56 (1970)). Despite this constitutional mandate,

Florida’s matching scheme results in the arbitrary and disparate treatment of its

citizens based on their county of residence.

It is well-established that when a state accords arbitrary and disparate

treatment to voters in different counties, which results in their votes being weighed

differently, those voters are deprived of their constitutional rights to due process

and equal protection. Bush, 531 U.S. at 107 (citing Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368,

379–80 (1963); Moore v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 814, 819 (1969)). Florida’s

registration scheme is “not a process with sufficient guarantees of equal treatment”

72
because it is completely devoid of specific standards to ensure that the right to vote

is available equally to all potential voters. See id. at 105–07 (finding that Florida’s

recount mechanisms to discern the “intent of the voter” were arbitrary as the state

lacked specific standards to ensure their equal application). From the lack of a

procedure to discern whether the state or the applicant herself committed a

matching error, to the differing notices and processes to correct unmatched

applications, Florida’s matching scheme is subject to disparate implementation

among Florida’s sixty-seven counties. Even if Subsection 6 mandated uniform

notice and methods for determining to whom a mistake is attributable, Florida’s

matching scheme would still result in uneven treatment of voters within counties.

Without the requisite post-“non-match” safeguards in place to ensure the

non-arbitrary treatment of its voters, Florida’s matching scheme stands as an

unnecessary, additional barrier to registration, resulting in systemic errors as to

applicants’ eligibility and thereby creating unequal opportunities for Florida

citizens to vote. Indeed, this conclusion is reinforced by the fact that this error-

prone system has resulted in a strong statistical likelihood that the registration

process will be substantially more difficult for a minority voter than for a non-

minority voter.27 Subsection 6’s disproportionate impact on minorities cannot be

27
See supra at note 4.

73
disregarded in assessing the scheme’s constitutionality.

C. Subsection 6 Places an Undue Burden on the Right to Vote.

Florida’s matching scheme likewise fails under the First and Fourteenth

Amendments because it imposes a severe restriction on the right to vote that is not

justified by a compelling state interest. See Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434

(1992). An individual’s fundamental right to vote must be weighed against the

state’s power to regulate elections. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 4, cl. 1; see also

Tashjian v. Republican Party, 479 U.S. 208, 217 (1986). We must assure that in

balancing the two, we take into account both “the character and magnitude of the

asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments”

and “the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden

imposed by its rule.” Burdick, 504 U.S. at 434 (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze,

460 U.S. 780, 789 (1983)).28

When an individual’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights are subject to

“severe” restrictions, the state election law must be “narrowly drawn to advance a

state interest of compelling importance.” Id. at 434; Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S.

28
There is no bright line separating a permissible election-related regulation from an
unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment freedoms. Timmons v. Twin Cities Area
New Party, 520 U.S. 351, 359 (1997); see also Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 730 (1974)
(noting that there is “no litmus-paper test for separating those restrictions that are valid from
those that are invidious” and that there “is no substitute for the hard judgments that must be
made”).

74
279, 289 (1992); see also Buckley v. Am. Constitutional Law Found., 525 U.S.

182, 216 (1999) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part). In this case,

we do not have a state electoral scheme that teeters on the cusp of reasonableness.

Florida’s matching scheme clearly imposes a “severe” restriction on 14,000

individuals—and counting—as it requires the matching of an identifying number

as a prerequisite to voter eligibility. See Common Cause/Georgia v. Billups, 439

F. Supp. 2d 1294, 1350 (N.D. Ga. 2006) (noting that the deprivation of the right to

vote is “undeniably demoralizing and extreme”).29

Subsection 6 severely restricts the right to vote by adding a layer of

complexity and precision to voter registration that is unduly burdensome. All

unmatched voters are subjected to additional bureaucratic, administrative, and

technological barriers to voting. Prior to the book-closing deadline, in order to cast

a regular ballot on election day, unmatched voters must take steps to provide to the

appropriate election official the necessary documentation to verify their application

information. This entails traveling to an election office and navigating through a

complex bureaucracy without clear guidance.

29
See Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 484 F.3d 436, 438 (2007) (en banc)
(Wood, J., dissenting) (“Recent national election history tells us . . . that disenfranchising even a
tiny percentage of voters can be enough to swing election outcomes” [referring to, among other
races, the gubernatorial race in Washington State in 2004, which was decided by only 129 votes]
and “[e]ven if only a single citizen is deprived completely of her right to vote . . . this is still a
‘severe’ injury for that particular individual.”).

75
 For those who remain unmatched past the book-closing deadline, Subsection

6 places even more onerous burdens on the right to vote. For those voters whose

applications were unmatched due to state error, and through no fault of their own,

the applicants will now have to go to an election office within forty-eight hours of

casting a provisional ballot. Within this short-window of time, the applicants will

have to verify not only that the state made a mistake, but also confirm their

application information to the satisfaction of an election official in their county.

However, if the state determines that an applicant’s own mistake led to the non-

match, that applicant will never have a chance to cure her mistake after voting

provisionally even if she presents indisputable documentary evidence of her

eligibility. Subsection 6’s burdensome requirements are all the more troubling

because, as noted earlier, the state does not even have a uniform procedure in place

to determine whether a mistake was made by the state or by the applicant herself.

To justify these burdensome requirements that have already disenfranchised

over 14,000 Florida citizens, the state has advanced two interests: preventing voter

fraud and maintaining the integrity of the electoral process. The state contends that

Subsection 6 “secures to lawful voters the exclusive enjoyment of their political

privileges” and that voter registration fraud “poison[s] the whole sphere of citizen

participation in a representative democracy.” (Appellant’s Br. at 43.) While both

76
of these are compelling interests, Subsection 6 is not narrowly drawn such that its

restrictions on the right to vote pass constitutional muster. In effect, Subsection 6

secures only to some lawful voters the exclusive enjoyment of their political

privileges while denying that very same right to other lawful voters. And if voter

registration fraud poisons the very fabric of our representative democracy, then

Subsection 6 is just as poisonous in denying otherwise eligible voters a chance to

have a voice in our democracy.

The state’s argument that Subsection 6 is the “only reliable barrier”

(Appellant’s Br. at 40) in preventing certain voter fraud practices is completely

unsupported. There is nothing “essential” about a registration system that deprives

thousands of otherwise eligible voters of a fundamental right, and it is definitely

not the only means of ensuring reliability in the integrity of elections. The state

could simply require photo identification to achieve the same end.30 Or, as in

California, Florida could simply issue a unique identifying number to unmatched

applicants and thus provide a reasonable safeguard for voters who are unmatched

30
When there are less burdensome means to achieve a state’s goal of preventing voter
fraud, we should be very hesitant to uphold a registration system that decreases the number of
registered voters and, as a result, chisels away at “the foundation of our representative form of
Government.” H.R. Rep. No. 85-291 (1957), reprinted in 1957 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1966, 1977.
(“Th[e] right to vote . . . is . . . the foundation of our representative form of Government. It is the
sole means by which the principle of consent of the governed as the source of governmental
authority is made a living thing. Deprivation of the right to vote is the first step on the road to
tyranny and dictatorship. . . . [T]he sovereign . . . must preserve this fundamental and basic right
against any and all unlawful interference.”).

77
but otherwise eligible to vote. See Cal. Code Regs. tit. 2, § 20108.70(c) (“If a

driver’s license or state identification number cannot be identified or verified

through [the matching database] and the registrant is otherwise eligible to vote,

then a unique identification number shall be issued . . . .”); see also id.

§ 20108.38(c). If the vast majority of other states do not have a matching scheme,

how are they able to conduct legitimate and functional elections? 31 By imposing

an unduly severe restriction on Florida citizens’ right to vote, the state has turned

back the clock on the fundamental right to vote by disregarding the constitutional

safeguards enacted to prohibit precisely the types of unlawful restraints embodied

in Subsection 6.32

31
Even within Florida, various groups are not subject to Subsection 6. First, Florida’s
matching scheme does not apply to voters registered prior to the enactment of Subsection 6.
Additionally, the matching requirement does not apply to those applicants who do not possess a
driver’s license or social security card. Those applicants do not have to go through the matching
process because the state provides them with a separate number. They only have to affirm that
they do not possess a driver’s license or social security number. See Fla. Stat. § 97.053(5)(a)(5).
It makes little sense to devise a registration process that deprives an individual of the right to
vote for truthfully providing her driver’s license or social security number but whose number is
not matched, while at the same time simply assigning a random number to another individual
who does not have an identifying number and sparing her from the bureaucratic mishaps of
Subsection 6.
32
For all of the reasons discussed above, Plaintiffs have demonstrated a substantial
likelihood of success on the merits. Furthermore, Plaintiffs have also satisfied the other three
factors necessary for a preliminary injunction, having demonstrated that the preliminary
injunction is necessary to prevent irreparable injury, the threatened injury outweighs any harm
the preliminary injunction would cause to the state, and the granting of the preliminary
injunction will not have an adverse effect on the public interest. See Johnson & Johnson Vision
Care, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, Inc., 299 F.3d 1242, 1246–47 (11th Cir. 2002); Parker v. State Bd.
of Pardons & Paroles 275 F.3d 1032, 1034–35 (11th Cir. 2001) (citing Zardui-Quintana v.
Richard, 768 F.2d 1213, 1216 (11th Cir. 1985)).

78
 V. Conclusion

The right to vote is a “fundamental political right, because preservative of all

rights.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886). Florida’s matching

requirement under Subsection 6, despite the state’s contentions, is nothing more

than a grave impediment to Florida citizens’ fundamental right to vote.33

Subsection 6 leaves a large number of otherwise eligible voters without a voice in

our democracy, simply because of alphabetical and numerical mishaps.34 We must

not forget that it was only just over fifty years ago that the Supreme Court held the

33
Subsection 6 further acts as an additional barrier in promoting higher voter turnout in
the United States, where voter participation already lags “well behind” participation rates in
other democratic countries. League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 126 S.
Ct. 2594, 2640 n.10 (2006) (citing Trevor Potter & Marianne H. Viray, Election Reform:
Barriers to Participation, 36 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 547, 575–76 (2003)). Average voter turnout
for other democratic countries (in alphabetical order as of 2003): Australia, 82.7%; Austria,
79.6%; Bahamas, 67.6%; Barbados, 66.7%; Belgium, 84.1%; Botswana, 44.6%; Canada, 60.1%;
Colombia, 33.8%; Costa Rica, 81%; Denmark, 81.7%; Finland, 71.5%; France, 60.6%;
Germany, 72.7%; Greece, 84.7%; Iceland, 88.3%; India, 60.1%; Ireland, 70.2%; Israel, 83.2%;
Italy, 90.2%; Jamaica, 46.4%; Japan, 57%; Luxembourg, 60.5%; Malta, 96.7%; Mauritius,
79.8%; Netherlands, 75.2%; New Zealand, 80.4%; Norway, 75.7%; Papua New Guinea, 72.4%;
Portugal, 78.4%; Spain, 79%; Sweden, 82.6%; Switzerland, 37.7%; Trinidad and Tobago,
68.8%; United Kingdom, 72.4%; and Venezuela, 49.9%. The average voter turnout for the
United States is 44.9%. See Potter & Viray, at 576 n.200.
34
Cf. Crawford v. Marion County Election Bd., 472 F.3d 949, 955 (7th Cir. 2007)
(Evans, J., dissenting) (“The potential for mischief with this law is obvious. Does the name on
the ID ‘conform’ to the name on the voter registration list? If the last name of a newly married
woman is on the ID but her maiden name is on the registration list, does it conform? If a name is
misspelled on one—Schmit versus Schmitt—does it conform? If a ‘Terence’ appears on one and
a shortened ‘Terry’ on the other, does it conform?”). All of the scenarios laid out by Judge
Evans would result in unmatched applications under Subsection 6.

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polling tax to be unconstitutional as a qualification for voting,35 and it was only just

over thirty-five years ago that the Court upheld Congress’ power to bar literacy

tests.36 Subsection 6, to the extent it acts as an unlawful impediment to voting that

disproportionately affects minorities, must be viewed within this framework of past

discriminatory practices with respect to voting.37

Florida’s matching scheme is not an additional safeguard in ensuring the

integrity of elections; rather, it is another in a long line of “discriminatory

weapon[s]”38 that have been used to disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters.39 The

state’s goal of preventing voter fraud does not make a registration scheme that

disproportionately deprives minorities of their right to vote any more legitimate. It

is at times such as these that we are reminded of how fragile our rights can be,

35
Harper v. Va. Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).
36
Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970).
37
Cf. Crawford, 484 F.3d at 438 (en banc) (Wood, J., dissenting) (“In this case, the
plaintiffs assert that the state voter identification law is causing the wholesale
disenfranchisement of some eligible voters. To the extent that it operates to turn them away
from the polls, it is just as insidious as the poll taxes and literacy tests that were repudiated long
ago.”).
38
Mitchell, 400 U.S. at 147 (Douglas, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part).
39
See Crawford, 484 F.3d at 439 (“Finally, this court should not ignore this country’s
history. Unfortunately, voting regulations have been used in the not-so-distant past for
discriminatory reasons. The law challenged in this case will harm an identifiable and often
marginalized group of voters to some undetermined degree. This court should take significant
care, including satisfactorily considering the motives behind such a law, before discounting such
an injury.”).

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especially for certain groups which have historically been deprived of certain

fundamental rights which our Constitution guarantees to every citizen, regardless

of race or ethnicity. It cannot be that accidentally transposing two numbers on a

voter registration application is a sufficient basis upon which to deprive an

otherwise eligible voter a right which is “too precious, too fundamental” 40—its

fundamental nature stemming from “the equal dignity owed to each voter,” Bush,

531 U.S. at 104, which is “at the heart of our democracy,” Burson v. Freeman, 504

U.S. 191, 198 (1992).

40
Harper, 383 U.S. at 670; see also 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg(a)(1)–(3) (“[T]he right of citizens
of the United States to vote is a fundamental right,” and “it is the duty of the Federal, State, and
local governments to promote the exercise of that right” because “discriminatory and unfair
registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in
elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups,
including racial minorities.” (emphases added)); Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972)
(noting that the right to vote is a “fundamental political right” (quoting Reynolds, 377 U.S. at
562)); Ill. State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 184 (1979) (“[V]oting
is of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure.”).

81