During the 2012 election, many voters were forced to wait in line for hours to cast a ballot or had to cast a provisional ballot. If you’re a college student and this happened to you, you can thank Rep. Dennis Baxley and Alachua County GOP Chair Stafford Jones.
Three years ago, when Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe won his election by 42 votes, Jones and his friends in the Republican Party claimed college students were part of an elaborate conspiracy to get voters to change their residency for one day in order to vote. The Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office found absolutely no evidence of any sort of conspiracy. Later, even Jones admitted he had no proof to his claim.
However, a lack of facts hasn’t stopped the GOP before. Despite any evidence of a real problem, Jones worked with Republican Rep. Baxley to make it harder for college students to vote. The law Baxley sponsored prevented students from voting if they did not change their residency to Alachua County at least a month before the election. Before the law, a student from another county could still vote in Gainesville on the day of the election, as long as election officials verified they had not voted in any other county.
Students who did not change their residence by October were forced to cast provisional ballots, which are notorious for never being counted due to the strain it puts on the Supervisor of Elections office. Baxley’s law worked: Provisional ballots increased by an average of 25 percent in each county. Early voting hours were also restricted, and students were among the many Democratic-leaning groups that were forced to wait in longer lines to vote, in some cases for more than an hour.
I find it appalling that elected representatives, namely Rep. Baxley and his Republican allies in Tallahassee, think it’s OK to restrict our voting rights. Voting in a city where most of us live 10 months out of the year is not “stealing an election” — it is participating in our right to democracy.
If you were one of the those students who had to cast a provisional ballot or are as equally offended by Baxley and Jones’ attempts to limit our voting rights as I am, I encourage you to come out and vote in the mayor’s race on March 19.
We have a stake in this election, and we deserve to have our voice heard and our votes counted.
Christina Ford is the director of youth outreach for the Craig Lowe re-election campaign. You can contact her via opinions@alligator.org.
