Florida seeks to renew law that only allows citizens to register voters

Carolina Wassmer, Florida director of a group focused on building Latino political power, said Tuesday her organization could be devastated if a court allows the state to ban noncitizens across the country from participating in the effort to register voters in Florida.

The restriction, part of the new Florida law SB7050, was blocked by a federal court with an emergency injunction last July. But the state is appealing the ruling and oral arguments are scheduled for Thursday before the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Many longtime Florida residents are lawful permanent residents. But those who are not yet citizens may engage in civic activities such as help with voter registration or support a campaign as part of their journey to become a U.S. citizen or to learn about U.S. government.

Wassmer said the injunction has allowed Poder Latinx to continue to use staff that already has field expertise and that does the work year after year, even if they can’t vote, “because they know the importance of voting.”

Legal permanent residents, generally, must wait five years before they are eligible to become U.S. citizens.

But the law’s provision, when enforced, provides for a $50,000 per person penalty for any noncitizen found to have been collecting or handling voter registration forms.

If the injunction is lifted, “we would have to completely restructure and this would really be devastating for our program,” said Wassmer, Poder Latinx’s Florida director.

Mark Ard, a spokesman for the Florida Secretary of State’s office, said the office does not comment on pending litigation. NBC News also has reached out to the state’s attorney general’s office.

The injunction blocking the voter registration restriction was awarded as part of a lawsuit filed by the Hispanic Federation, a national Latino advocacy group. It is also challenging other parts of the Republican-sponsored law along with various other groups. The case is scheduled to go to trial in April.

Frederick Vélez, national director of engagement for the Hispanic Federation, said community-based organizations face more difficulty registering people to vote with the new provision. He said communities of color are four or five times more likely to register through nonpartisan groups than their white counterparts.

Voter registration numbers by third-party groups have decreased since 2021, when Florida began enacting voter restriction laws, he said.

“Florida has been passing these voter suppression bills every single year, chipping away at our rights and chipping away at the way that we can motivate voters to go out and vote and that we can inform voters so that we can register (them) to vote,” Vélez said.

State officials have said previously that the law is intended to clean up the registration process, target groups that regularly turn in late registration forms and to prevent noncitizens from voting.

Frankie Miranda, president and director of the Hispanic Federation, said his group is not questioning the state’s authority to regulate third-party voter registration organizations.

“The problem here is that it has drawn a law that has no connection to the problem that it has identified,” he said, echoing a finding of the federal judge that issued the injunction.  

In issuing the injunction, Judge Mark Walker said that while Florida had found a problem regarding timely submission of voter registration applications, it had not identified “any connective tissue between the problem and the state’s proposed solution.”

The judge said that, at the hearing, the state “acknowledged a dearth of evidence connecting non-citizens to late-filed voter registration applications.”

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