ST. PETERSBURG — With early voting for the Nov. 3 general election less than three weeks away, civil rights groups, the NAACP and South St. Petersburg residents are pressing Pinellas County to add an early voting site in the Childs Park area — and the Southern Poverty Law Center says the current map may violate state and federal voting-rights law.
Pinellas will offer seven early voting locations from Oct. 19 through Nov. 1, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, according to the Supervisor of Elections’ early voting page. None sits in South St. Petersburg’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. The closest options for many residents are the Gulfport Neighborhood Center, the downtown Supervisor of Elections office on First Avenue North, and J.W. Cate Recreation Center farther north.
“Voting should be a convenience,” Dereck Cooper, political action chair for the St. Petersburg NAACP, told WFLA. The chapter plans a free rideshare program with pickup zones so people without cars can reach existing sites.
SPLC’s notice and what it asks for
In a Sept. 25 letter to Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus, SPLC Senior Staff Attorney Matletha Bennette warned that the county’s seven general-election sites are all in majority-white areas while South St. Petersburg — home to the highest concentration of Black voters in the county — has none. Florida law requires early voting sites to be geographically located to provide equal voting opportunity insofar as practicable, the letter says, and also cites Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments.
“Based on our preliminary analysis, it does not seem as if voting sites are geographically located to provide that equal voting opportunity,” Bennette told WMNF. She said an area containing about a third of St. Pete’s Black population currently has no early voting site, and that a five-mile drive for someone with a car can mean an hour on the bus for someone without one.
The letter asks Marcus’s office to: designate at least one qualifying early voting site in South St. Petersburg (Childs Park or ZIP codes 33711–33712); add a secure ballot drop station there; and coordinate with the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority on free, nonpartisan rides from South St. Pete during early voting. Florida requires early voting sites to be designated at least 30 days before Election Day, so the letter framed early October as a hard deadline to cure.
Nearly 50 churches and civic groups signed a similar March request for a Childs Park site. Advocates say some Black voters remain reluctant to use Gulfport because of its history as a sundown town “within living memory,” Bennette told WMNF — and that Childs Park residents often travel farther downtown rather than vote early in Gulfport.
What the elections office says
The Supervisor of Elections office told WFLA that early voting locations are selected years in advance under a countywide plan, that all Pinellas voters are within five miles of an early voting site, and that residents can vote by mail at VotePinellas.gov or at one of 157 Election Day precincts. A Marcus representative told the Tampa Bay Times that adding a South St. Pete site might require adding sites elsewhere to satisfy equal-access rules.
South St. Pete resident Darlene Hill, who has voted early for decades, told WFLA she wants sites close enough that neighbors can walk or take the bus without depending on a ride. “Sometimes that hinders some people from voting,” she said. “If we have somewhere closer, it’d be much better to vote early.”
Early voting opens Oct. 19. Whether Pinellas adds a South St. Petersburg location before then will shape how tens of thousands of voters cast ballots — including those deciding St. Pete’s $600 million SPAR storm-resilience bond on the same Nov. 3 ballot.