Republicans, Democrats disagree on voter registration issue

Last weekend, Florida Republicans celebrated their party passing 1 million more registered voters than Florida Democrats, overturning an advantage dating back to Reconstruction.

Voter registration numbers are used as a scorecard by political parties, campaigns and pundits in between elections. Conventional wisdom holds that the more registered Republicans, the bigger the universe of voters for the GOP to draw from and the more likely they are to win elections. If a voter’s registration is removed or modified, the voter is far less likely to remediate that in time to cast a ballot in the fall. 

In a statement, Florida Republican Party Chair Evan Power trumpeted the creation of “the most successful party in the nation.” 

“Our success goes beyond just numbers.”

On that point, if nothing else, Florida Democrats agreed.

“Republicans have used every dirty trick in the book to suppress votes in Florida,” said FDP Chair Nikki Fried. “Today’s results are a product of a systematic and coordinated effort of Republican voter suppression tactics, which has eliminated millions of Democratic voters from the rolls over the past year, marking them inactive and canceling mail-in-ballots.”

Pinellas Democratic Party Chair Jennifer Griffith expanded on the accusation in a Facebook post Sunday. In it, she accused Republicans of achieving their registration gains by decimating vote by mail and voter registration organizations through two laws, SB 90 and SB 7050, noting that every voter who casts a ballot by mail will have to re-apply in January 2025 and prior to every general election going forward. 

Further, she added, 26,857 Pinellas Democratic voters were moved to inactive status since January 2023. That meant they wouldn’t be counted in the “active registered voters” figure cited by Power and others.

When the Catalyst reviewed voter registration data for the period from January 2023 to July 2024, the 26,857 Democratic voters Griffith highlighted had indeed been moved from active to inactive status – but so had 18,947 Republicans and 34,584 non-party (NPA) voters. Further, these voters becoming “inactive” do not lose their ability to cast a vote – at least, not yet.

Deputy Supervisor of Elections Dustin Chase noted that laws passed by the Legislature featured a number of changes in how they interact with voters, especially regarding “list maintenance,” which determines a voter’s status and eligibility to vote. They included making voters “inactive” who have not cast a ballot in two consecutive “general elections,” or four years, and the cancellation of a voter’s eligibility if they do not take further action for two more elections after that. 

To be moved from inactive to active registration, a voter is required to take action that re-establishes their activity, which include voting; updating their address; replying to a communication from the SOE; or requesting a mail ballot, which now requires additional identification.

“The difference between being inactive and ineligible is whether our office has had any contact with you,” Chase noted. “The newness is that someone had to participate.” 

While a large number of voters – 164,054 – have been removed from the voter rolls since the passage of SB90, the overwhelming majority of these were procedural, according to Chase. These include 70,532 who moved out of Pinellas County and 38,138 who died. 

Another 31,641 were removed through the list maintenance process. In each case, however, these voters had not cast a ballot for at least eight years, or four election cycles, and had not replied to repeated attempts by the Supervisor of Elections to contact them.

Legal changes

SB 90 was passed as part of a wave of state laws addressing elections post-2020. It placed restrictions on third-party voter registration efforts, required Florida ID or Social Security numbers to update registration information, and limited Vote-By-Mail (VBM) requests to a single general election cycle, according to a fact sheet issued by the Orange County Supervisor of Elections and a 2023 report by the Florida Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. 

SB 7050, which followed in 2023, placed additional restrictions on third party voter activities, including requiring yearly registration of any groups doing voter engagement and limits to VBM collection, including prohibitions on ballot collection by non-citizens, and levied significant penalties on non-compliant organizations, as described by the Pensacola News Journal. Portions of SB 7050 have been blocked in federal courts. 

Griffith highlighted that SB 7050 would lower vote by mail registration, impede voter outreach, and prompt greater uncertainty in the electorate. While the Florida Democratic Party has put into place voter protection teams in each county to help voters with resulting issues, she feared that may not be enough in the event of a close election in November. 

If Democrats win, she asks, “Will [DeSantis] claim that there’s some kind of fraud because they have a million more voters?”

State Representative Berny Jacques (R-Seminole) rebuffed these concerns. “It’s pretty ridiculous. It sounds like sore losers talking,” he said. He explained that as recently as 2018, Democrats held a voter registration advantage; nevertheless, Republicans held the Governor’s mansion, defeated then-Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) and won three out of four constitutional offices statewide.

“We’re talking about a million more voters. Bear in mind they outnumbered us by 300,000 [in 2018]… We’re all playing by the same rules.”

Jacques, who was in the Legislature and voted for SB 7050 in 2023, made clear he would push for further changes to the laws if needed. “Just because something is going well today doesn’t mean it will go well tomorrow,” Jacques said. “Anything that strengthens our elections, I’m going to be for it.”

The Republican surge, he argues, “has been the result of our policies, especially with the leadership of Governor DeSantis. People have flocked to our state, voting with their feet, because of the conservative policies ushered in by our governor and our Legislature.” 

Chase noted that he was unaware of specific concerns being raised about the implementation of those laws, and both the laws and the Supervisor of Elections’ procedures involve multiple contact attempts to keep a voter on the rolls. But even if the complexity level of doing so has increased, their role was to implement the law as written.

“The Supervisor’s office is a rule follower, not a rule-maker,” he emphasized. “We’re not the Legislature.”

A 2023 report, while noting potential disadvantages from the law and recommending a number of changes, nevertheless found that SB 90 had not led to voter suppression: “Despite the new restrictions SB 90 imposed to improve voter integrity, the available data suggests that the law did not reduce voter registration or voting during the 2022 midterm elections, either for the electorate as a whole or racial minority voters in particular.”

To Griffith, however, even the risk of voter suppression was too great: “I’m just going to go back to the Constitution. Voting is supposed to be every citizen’s right… free and fair, without interference.

“There should be no roadblocks to a person casting a ballot and getting to the ballot box.”