One for the good guys:
A federal judge in Florida has blocked enforcement of a state law that could have fined voter registration groups hundreds of dollars per ballot, according to a press release by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
At issue in the case, League of Women Voters v. Cobb (case no. 06-21265), was a Florida law, (Fla. Laws 2005-277, Secs. 2 and 7), that would have imposed a mandatory fine of $250 for each and every voter registration form submitted nonpartisan registration drives more than 10 days after the form was collected from a prospective voter, $500 for each registration form submitted after the passing of a registration deadline, and $5,000 for each registration form not submitted, for any reason.
Political parties would have been exempted from the law.
For nonpartisan groups, however, the law included a “strict liability” legal standard, meaning that no extenuating circumstance — not even destruction of an office by a hurricane — would have excused the failure to submit a registration form within the law’s deadlines.
