EXCLUSIVE: Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters

Glitch in Florida’s Voter Registration System can Disenfranchise Absentee Voters

by Michael C. Herron & Daniel A. Smith

A couple weeks ago, when we were investigating for our academic research patterns in rejection rates of absentee and provisional ballots cast in the August 14, 2012 primary election, we discovered some anomalies in the Florida statewide voter file.

Upon further investigation, and after following up with some county Supervisors of Elections, we believe that we have found a troubling anomaly in Florida’s Voter Registration System. This oversight that we stumbled upon has the potential to disenfranchise registered voters who mailed in absentee ballots from their counties of residence and then subsequently updated their voter registration addresses with new information to reflect having moved.  By being vigilant and updating their voter registration information to reflect their current addresses, these voters risk becoming “self-disenfranchised.”

Basically, what’s happening is this. As soon as a voter who has moved updates her address with her new local Supervisor of Elections, her voter record in the state’s main voter database is changed so that it indicates the new county.  If, however, the voter requested and mailed in an absentee ballot for a given election while living in her old county, the state’s database will make it appear (correctly) to the former Supervisor of Elections, who no longer has custody of the voter’s file, that this voter no longer resides in said county.  As such, when the former SOE receives and tries to process the absentee ballot, mailed before the voter moved, it will be rejected.

If this voter, after updating her voter registration, were to try to cast another ballot in the same election in her new county, thinking that she should do so having moved, she would be potentially committing a felony (for voting more than once), even though her initial absentee ballot will be rejected by the SOE in the county in which she used to reside.  Still, if she persists and goes to the polls during the early voting period or on Election Day, she will be given a provisional ballot if demanded.  This provisional ballot will (correctly) be rejected as illegal by the SOE in the county in which the voter presently resides, because the registration system (correctly) indicates that she has already requested an absentee ballot in another county.

Such a civic-minded voter–who updates her voter registration after requesting an absentee ballot from a former county of residence–is caught in a Catch-22.

It’s impossible to know how many legally registered voters in Florida will be affected by this Catch-22 in the upcoming November 2012 election.  However, we know that what we have described here actually happened in the August 2012 primary to an individual who updated his place of residence after he had previously requested an absentee ballot.

And we already know of at least a dozen cases in one (relatively small) county in Florida in which a close variant of this scenario occurred.

We believe that the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections has been alerted to the glitch we’ve described here.  But we think as well that voters in Florida should be aware of it so that they avoid self-disenfranchisement.

We also hope that the Florida Division of Elections will try to remedy this situation before more of Florida’s registered voters unwittingly have their absentee ballots rejected.

Michael C. Herron is professor of government at Dartmouth College, and Daniel A. Smith is professor of political Science at the University of Florida.

NCSL Profile of Polk County Supervisor of Elections, Lori Edwards

A very nice profile of Polk SOE Lori Edwards by NCSL is available here.

Here are her responses to the key questions:

Q:  The nation has been watching Florida’s court case  over last year’s reduction in early voting. What’s your take?

A: The impact of the shortening of the early voting hours is less than that of some other new laws in Florida. The one most bothersome to me is the harsh guidelines for third party voter registration. I see people in our community, whether they are from the chamber of commerce, or teachers, or young people, who basically back away from helping give people the opportunity to register to vote because they’re daunted and intimidated by the heavy-handed bureaucracy as well as the fines.
Just recently the court threw out the fines and the 48-hour deadline for returning completed registration forms, but many unnecessary hoops and chutes and ladders still exist, just to register people. I’m not worried about the political parties and the League of Women Voters; they’ll be fine. It is the community people who are turning away.

Q: What other issues are front and center for your jurisdiction now?

A:  A number of issues have been big in this very important election year in what is a very important swing state. One is the voter purge we saw earlier this year. It was not only slapdash, but it had no upside. The voter rolls were not improved! All that this did was to shake voter confidence. That is going to produce challenges, and it may have the effect of tamping down turnout.

Latest court filings in Arcia v. Detzner, challenging Florida’s effort to purge non-citizens

I’ve posted them here:

DE65-1 – Memorandum of Law

DE65-2 – Statement of Undisputed Facts

DE65-3 – Exhibit A Declaration of Ion V. Sancho

DE65-4 – Exhibit B Declaration and Expert Report of Daniel A. Smith

Want the Real “New” Voter Registration Numbers in Florida?

Matt Dixon of the Florida Times Union, who I think is a fine journalist, had a piece the other day with the headline: Democratic registration all but dries up since new Florida laws.

The column has been picked up several by several outlets, including the New York Times and Rachel Maddow’s Blog, and it has sparked lively discussions in such outlets as Weasel Zippers, Hullabaloo, and Addicting Info.

But Dixon’s figures, which I discussed earlier today here, are wildly off the mark and completely misleading.

Yes, “new” voter registrations are down in Florida, but nowhere near are they as dire as Dixon’s column suggests.

My collaborator Michael Herron at Dartmouth and I have just crunched the numbers, using data from the Florida Department of State voter files created on April 1, 2012 and April 1, 2008.

According to the state’s official records, more than 155k voters registered as Democrats in 2011.  Slightly less than 138k voters registered as Republicans in 2011.

Not surprisingly, given House Bill 1355′s draconian restrictions placed on third party voter registration organizations (3PVROs), which went into effect on July 1, 2011 and frustrated the ability of groups like the League of Women Voters to sign up new voters, registration figures for both parties were down in 2011 compared to 2007 (28.1% fewer Floridians registered as Democrats in 2011 compared to 2007, and 15.5% fewer Floridians registered as Republicans in 2011 compared to 2007).

But these dampened voter registration figures are nowhere near those published in Dixon’s column.

The bottom line: More than 155 thousand voters registered as Democrats and more than 138 thousand voters registered as Republicans in Florida in 2011.  The numbers are down, but that hardly looks like “drying up” to me.

It’s Time to Get the Voter Registration Numbers Correct in Florida

Florida’s controversial election law, HB 1355, which has restricted early voting, made the casting of provisional ballots more likely, and cracked down on third party voter registration organization (3PVRO) efforts to register eligible Florida citizens, is still making news.

Yesterday, Judge Robert Hinkle, a federal judge in Tallahassee who is presiding over the legal action brought forth by the League of Women Voters and the other plaintiffs challenging the constraints and penalties placed on 3PVROs, took a more definitive step in deep-sixing several provisions of Governor Scott’s signature voter-suppression law, ruling that he intends to issue a permanent injunction as soon as the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses the state’s appeal of his preliminary injunction that he issued back on May 31, 2012.

Anecdotal evidence from groups sitting on the sidelines in Florida suggests that the law has indeed dampened voter registration across the state.

But how should we measure such a decrease, if indeed there has been one?

Florida Times-Union reporter, Matt Dixon, tried to measure the impact of the law in a story he wrote earlier this week that has gotten a lot of press, including a reprint of his findings in the New York Times and on Rachel Maddow’s Blog.  The headline of his article screams, “Democratic registration all but dries up since new Florida laws.”

But let’s take a closer look at Dixon’s methodology.

According to Dixon’s analysis, between July 1, 2011 and August 1, 2012, the number of registered Democrats statewide increased by only 11,365, compared to increases in Democratic registrations over the 13 months that preceded the 2004 and 2008 elections, which he claims increased an average of 209,425 voters.

Dixon also provides similar numbers of new registrations for Republicans, as show in this chart produced on Maddow’s Blog:

Chart: Florida’s voter-registration collapse

Although voter registration numbers are indeed down in Florida compared with other years, there are serious problems with Dixon’s analysis.

First, it does not measure NEW voters who are registered over the three 13-month periods.  Rather, his analysis looks at the differences in aggregate registration numbers for the two parties, which does not hold constant any increases, or (in fact) decreases in the overall number of registered voters in Florida.  Furthermore, statewide population had increased prior to the two previous elections, but recently has remained flat, decreasing the overall pool of potential new registrants of either party.

Second, voter registration is a daily, ongoing occurrence, and total number of registered Democrats and Republicans Dixon compares over the three spans does capture the possible impact of HB 1355, which went into effect on July 1, 2011. Indeed, his 13-month time-frame includes two months (June & July 2012) when 3PRVROs in Florida were once again registering voters after Judge Hinkle’s preliminary injunction on May 31, 2012.

A much better way to measure the effects of HB 1355 on voter registration numbers in Florida is to do what Professor Michael Herron and I have done in this paper.

I don’t have time to summarize our results, but perhaps these figures might suffice for now:

As we write on page 19 in our paper,

I’ll certainly have more on this later…

Exclusive Empirical Research: “House Bill 1355 and Voter Registration in Florida”

Professor Michael Herron (Dartmouth College) and I have posted a draft of our American Political Science Association annual conference paper, “House Bill 1355 and Voter Registration in Florida,” here.

Here’s the Abstract:

New state laws governing voter registration went into effect in Florida on July 1, 2011. Among the legal changes
promulgated as a consequence of a piece of Florida state legislation known as House Bill 1355 were new registration
requirements for third-party groups like the League of Women Voters and a new oath, warning of prison time and fines,
that voter registration agents had to sign before engaging in registration activities. Such changes raised the implicit
costs that eligible Florida citizens faced when registering to vote, and we show, consistent with this logic, that voter
registrations across Florida in late 2011 dropped precipitously compared to registrations in late 2007. This pattern is
evident among registrants in general, among registrants age 21 and younger, and among the number of individuals
who registered as Democrats as well as the number who registered as Republicans. Outside of House Bill 1355, we
know of no credible explanations for our findings about Florida registration drops in 2011. Our results thus show how
restrictions on the way that third-party organizations register voters can have tangible effects on actual registrations
and, given that registration prior to an election is a civic necessity in Florida, can affect electoral participation.

You Want Numbers? Florida Secretary of State Voter Purge Netted 10 “Potential Noncitizens” who may have Voted

That’s right.

10

Out of 11.2 million or so voters on the official statewide rolls as of April 1, 2012.

Here’s some quick analysis…

Approximately 0.000088496% of the current statewide voter roll may have voted illegally once (or perhaps more) over the past decade or so.

The percentage is even less when you consider the tens of MILLIONS of votes cast in local and statewide elections in Florida since 2006.

Notwithstanding the hundreds of Florida citizens who have been falsely accused by the Florida Secretary of State as being “potential noncitizens” who are supposedly corrupting the integrity of our voting system, it’s great to see that Governor Scott has exposed the myth of voter fraud in Florida.

Or not.

You see, the Florida Division of Elections, in its ill-advised and likely illegal effort to purge the voter rolls of what it claims are “potential noncitizens,” originally identified some 182,000 individuals who fit the bill.

Well, not confident in its list, the (new) Secretary of State, Ken Detzner (you see, the previous SOS, Kurt Browning, who was no angel himself when it came to protecting the right of Florida citizens to vote, resigned when he didn’t have enough confidence in the purge list his office originally generated, but that Governor Scott wanted him to pursue), pared it down to some 25,000 names, and then, finally, to 2,625 names, which his office then shipped off to the 67 Supervisors of Elections to do his dirty work.

Some of the SOEs balked, understandably.

But after the purging was done by the independently elected Supervisors of Elections, Governor Scott proudly defended the Secretary of State’s effort, saying to NPR, “We found that nearly 100 individuals that are non-U.S. citizens are registered to vote and over 50 have voted in prior elections.”

Now, the facts.

First, as I’ve documented elsewhere on these pages, no evidence has been provided by the Secretary of State that the 107 “potential noncitizens” it touted as being removed from its list were indeed noncitizens.

Second, also as I’ve documented here, a majority of the 107 individuals who were removed from the voter rolls were not even on the Florida Secretary of State’s purge list of 2,625 “potential noncitizens” that it sent to the Supervisors of Elections. Only 41 of the 107 names were on the SOS’s purge list of “potential noncitizens.”

As for those 41 (out of 2,625) individuals who the SOS identified as “potential noncitizens” and who the SOEs removed from the rolls (presumably after the SOEs–who do the actual purging–received proof), I have crunched the numbers, and identifying exactly 10 who may have cast a ballot.

Here’s the breakdown of the epidemic of alleged “noncitizens” voting, with the county and the last date of the election in which someone using that “potential noncitizen’s” name cast a ballot.

DAD		11/7/2006
HIL		11/7/2006
DAD		11/4/2008
LEE		11/4/2008
PAS		11/4/2008
OKA		11/2/2010
DAD		6/28/2011

ALA		PRE-2006
BRO		PRE-2006
DAD		PRE-2006

Really? That’s it? We should have confidence in the Secretary of State’s new effort to purge Florida voters by matching data from the federal Department of Homeland Security with its own admittedly “obsolete” data?

Frankly, I’d rather trust casting a legitimate vote in Senegal.

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Secretary of State Admits Identifying “Potential Non-citizens” using “Obsolete” Data

Of course, you wouldn’t know that reading the completely misleading headline in the “AP NewsBreak” story rushed to publication by the Washington Post and numerous other outlets.

The real headline should be, “Florida Secretary of State Admits Identifying “Potential Noncitizens with ‘Outdated’ Data.”

The pending agreement with the Department of Homeland Security is hardly a “victory” for the GOP, as the Washington Post’s headline screams.

It is true that the Department of Homeland Security reached a pending agreement with the Florida Department of State to allow the Division of Elections to access the federal SAVE database — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — so as to more accurately identify “potential noncitizens” who might be incorrectly registered to vote in Florida. (Lord knows, the Florida Secretary of State needs help in its endeavors, as I’ve recently documented elsewhere, extensively.

It is important to disassemble the AP’s misleading story regarding the Florida Secretary of State’s “victory.”

First, the pending agreement with Homeland Security prohibits the state of Florida from using only the name and birth date of registered voters when requesting SAVE data to verify whether registered voters are noncitizens. Second, the Division of Elections may only access the SAVE database if it provides a “unique identifier” — such as an “alien number” or a certificate number on a Certificate of Naturalization or Certificate of Citizenship — for those who it suspects may be ineligible to be registered to vote.  But the Secretary of State does not (rightly) collect such information on voter registration forms, and the driver’s license records that the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has provided to the Division of Elections are often inaccurate or outdated, leading to numerous false-positives when they are matched with the voter rolls.

In other words, if Florida Supervisors of Elections end up purging voters from the rolls using inaccurate or outdated information provided to them by the Division of Elections, they risk disenfranchising citizens, stripping them of their right to vote.

So, it is quite questionable how newly acquired access to the federal SAVE database will help ferret out “potential noncitizens,” as most citizens on the Florida voter rolls do not have a “unique identifier” that is included in the federal database.

What is not questionable from the pending agreement is that the Florida Secretary of State has admitted that it has been identifying “potential noncitizens” using ‘outdated’ information.

As Secretary of State Ken Detzner stated in a Letter to Supervisors Regarding SAVE sent to the 67 Supervisors of Elections on Saturday, July 14:

The process to identify potential non-citizens will include a carefully calibrated matching process between the Florida Voter Registration System and the driver’s license records of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles before any records are verified through SAVE. The existing file of potentially ineligible voters which was created months ago, is now outdated and will not be used as the basis for further action by the Department of State. It should be considered obsolete. (Emphasis in red, mine.)

One would hope that those individuals who are citizens and legally registered, and who were either incorrectly identified as “potential noncitizens” by the Florida Secretary of State, or worse, wrongly purged from the rolls by the Supervisors of Elections in early June because of the use of ‘outdated” or “obsolete” data, will be reinstated.

Clearly, any matching process between datafiles that are created for vastly different purposes may lead to wrongful ‘convictions,’ depriving individuals of the civil rights.

It remains to be seen whether, and how, the Florida Division of Elections will conduct a matching process with the federal SAVE database.  For the sake of the rights of all Floridians, let’s hope it is done more carefully and more transparently than the state’s feeble effort earlier this year.

Voting Rights Expanded

In Illinois.

Attorney Dan Johnson on his blog, Progressive Advocacy, writes:

On July 6, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law SB 3722 (passed with exclusively Democratic votes) that contains two innovative and exciting provisions that will lead to more citizens voting this November. The first extends the period of time when citizens can register to vote and update their address until the Saturday before the election….I suspect more than 25,000 will be able to vote — who otherwise would have been turned away from their ballots because of government-imposed administrative deadlines — in November of 2012.

The second provision of the new law requires election authorities to offer early voting on the college campuses of the major public universities in the state. This requirement will ensure that college students (who often don’t have a car) won’t have to make their way to the obscure office of the county clerk off-campus in order to cast an early ballot, but instead will be able to go to a high-traffic area and cast their ballot during the few weeks before the election when early voting is offered.

Things couldn’t be more different in Florida. In May 2011, when they passed HB 1355, Republican lawmakers cracked down on voter registration drives, cut the days of early voting (and still prohibit it on college campuses), and made it more difficult for students and other transient populations to change their address and cast a regular ballot. And these actions preceded and were independent of Governor Scott asking his Secretary of State to strip eligible citizens of their voting rights through his bogus, systematic purge of the voter rolls.

While Illinois stands as a model for other states that want to expand the franchise, Florida returns to the days of Jim Crow, erecting barriers to prevent citizens from participating in the political process.

EXCLUSIVE: Was Peter Schorsch (aka @SaintPetersBlog) Purged by the Florida Secretary of State?

No.

But the Florida Secretary of State has claimed that 9 out of the 107 individuals purged from the voter rolls for allegedly being “potential noncitizens” are from Pinellas, Peter’s beloved county on the sandy shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

Funny thing is, though, of the 37 “potential noncitizens” the Division of Elections flagged from Pinellas in its systematic effort in April to cleanse the voter list, only one was removed by the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections, Deborah Clark, after she reviewed the state’s shoddy work. The other 36 individuals wrongly fingered by Secretary of State Ken Detzner in his unwarranted purge are indeed citizens and are eligible to vote.

Whoops.

Oh, and as if this comes as a shock: 59.5% of those wrongly accused by the Secretary of State who are living in Pinellas County are minorities. And only 1/5 were Republicans.

(You can ask Peter what percentage of registered voters in Pinellas are minorities and Republicans).

But cut the Secretary of State and his crack staff some flack.

His list of 37 “potential noncitizens” residing in Pinellas County was accurate 2.7% of the time.  (Actually, the Division of Elections ill-advised and likely illegal purge has the fingermarks of an individual who evidently is no longer working in the office. Perhaps more on that later…).

The one “potential noncitizen” snagged in the Governor’s expansive and faulty dragnet–a Hispanic man in his 50s, living in St. Petersburg, who registered to vote in 2001 as a Republican(!)–has never cast a ballot in Florida.

Oh well.

The other 8 “potential noncitizens” removed from the voter rolls in Pinellas County–and celebrated by Governor Scott that his purge is working–were in fact identified by and removed from the list by Supervisor Clark.

Of those 8 individuals removed from the county’s list of voters by the SOE, exactly zero are the April 1, 2012 state voter file. That’s a big fat zero. They are not on the state’s list of registered voters, and thus we don’t know anything about them–their party, their race/ethnicity, their age, their past voting history (if any) and most importantly, whether or not they were citizens and eligible to vote.

Seems par for the course.

As I’ve written before, of the 11.2 million registered voters in the state of Florida, the Florida Secretary of State identified 2,625 “potential noncitizens,” and 41 have been removed from the rolls.  And of the 2,625 “potential noncitizens” identified by Governor Scott’s henchmen, there is evidence that perhaps 7 have ever cast a ballot.  It remains unclear, however, as to whether or not they were noncitizens (at the time) and thus ineligible to exercise their franchise.

As I’ve said before, Governor Scott’s Voter Purge must come to a complete halt.