FollowUp 3: Voting Rights

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported on 23 October that New Smyrna Beach High School teacher Jill Cicciarelli may be fined thousands of dollars for helping students legally register to vote.

Prepping 17-year-olds for the privileges and responsibilities of voting in a democracy is nothing new for civics teachers, but when Jill Cicciarelli organized a drive at the start of the school year to get students pre-registered, she ran afoul of Florida's new and controversial election law. 

Among other things, the new rules require that third parties who sign up new voters register with the state and that they submit applications within 48 hours. The law also reduces the time for early voting from 14 days to eight and requires voters who want to give a new address at the polls to use a provisional ballot.

At least the school is not upset with her.

For the students involved in the voter registration drive, the incident has proven an unsolicited lesson in real-life civics, New Smyrna Beach High Principal Jim Tager said. 

"You're talking about a high-energy teacher who cares about her kids, cares about her community and cares about her country," he said. "We want to do things by the rules. We just didn't know about these. In the end, I think this has become a good real-life lesson."

What is upsetting is that this law is limiting the ability of educators to empower their students.  To deny those who are legally entitled to vote the easy opportunity to do so is unAmerican.  Thanks to Care2.

3 October 2011, Original Pedantic Political Ponderings article.
14 October 2011, FollowUp 1.
22 October 2011, FollowUp 2.

14 November 2011, FollowUp 4.
14 December 2011, FollowUp 5.
8 March 2012, FollowUp 6.
2 April 2012, FollowUp 7.
3 June 2012, FollowUp 8.