Groups Sue Florida Over the Amendment 4 Signature Recount, Saying 43,000 Signatures Were Wrongly Flagged
Civil-rights and voter groups filed a federal lawsuit in Tallahassee on Thursday challenging the state's recount of Amendment 4 petition signatures, arguing the process could keep the proposal off Tuesday's ballot.
A coalition of groups has sued Florida over the state's recount of petition signatures for the proposed Amendment 4, in a case filed days before the November 3 general election. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in Tallahassee, challenges the state-ordered recount after the state flagged roughly 43,000 signatures as invalid or problematic, according to the Tallahassee Democrat's reporting on the filing.
The plaintiffs — the ACLU of Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Florida Rising, Poder Latinx and LatinoJustice PRLDEF — argue in the filing that the state's software erroneously flagged valid signatures and that the state has withheld information that voters and petition circulators would need to cure signatures marked invalid, according to the reporting. Those are the plaintiffs' claims in an active lawsuit; the state's position will be made in its court response.
The stakes in the filing are the ballot itself: the plaintiffs argue the recount process could knock the proposed amendment off the November 3 ballot and, in their words as reported by Florida Phoenix, unlawfully keep a popular proposal from the voters. The case was filed on October 29, five days before Election Day, and no ruling had been reported as of this station's Saturday file.
