The U.S. Justice Department has approved the state’s attempt to reduce the number of early voting days in five counties.
This signals a likely approval by the federal court that has been reviewing the state’s new voting law for potential harm to minority voters for more than a year now.
This move is already getting some criticism experts and voting rights groups that say it still hurts those voters.
The Department of Justice has signed off on a plan that reduces early voting from up to 14 days to 8 days.
The caveat: the five counties that were approved have to stay open for 12 hours a day.
Up until now, the fight to get new early voting schedules approved for those counties has been contentious.
But University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith says this move still hurts minority voters.
“It’s going to have a major impact. Reducing the number of days even if you expand the hours to 12 hours does not necessarily mean you are going to have the same access to the polls for a variety of voters", Smith says. "What is certain is that we are not going to have 12 hours of early voting for most of the counties over the 8 day period.”
That’s because the law applied in the other 62 counties doesn’t require them to stay open for 12 hours during early voting.
University of Miami Professor Joseph Uscinski says he doesn’t believe that the new arrangement hurts minority voters, and that early voting is a just a bonus for voters.
“Rememeber Election day is just that: election day. It’s not election week. It’s not election month. It’s not election year", says Uscinski.
A spokesman for the ACLU of Florida says they are disappointed the change has been approved by the DOJ.