Following an appeal against Florida election security reforms passed in 2021, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that after-hour drop boxes may make it inconvenient to return ballots outside business hours, but they don’t keep Floridians from voting.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said last April that Walker’s ruling was flawed and that evidence did not show that lawmakers deliberately targeted Black voters. Walker previously had ruled that restrictions in Florida’s 2021 election law would have suppressed Black voters, but parts of that decision were overturned by an appellate court and sent back to the Tallahassee judge to reconsider, and in his ruling this week, Walker said that the voting rights groups appealing Florida’s election law failed to show that the restrictions on drop boxes unduly burdened voters. Walker also said that restrictions in the law on third-party voter registration groups also failed to be proven unduly burdensome.
