For months, Florida Democrats have sought to make the case that Republicans’ growing voter registration advantage disguises a targeted voter suppression tactic that disproportionately affects their party.
Democrats say the way the state publishes their registration numbers is unfair and misleading and that recent changes to state law have made it harder for them to register new voters. But even though an overall decrease in voter registration has brought down registration numbers across party lines, the reality is that Republicans are still out-registering Democrats.
MEMO: The Truth About the Voter Registration Gap.Republicans are quick to take victory laps on their manufactured voter registration lead but nearly 1 million Democratic voters have been wiped from the total and labeled “inactive”. Learn more ️ https://t.co/FdQPld6xg9
— Florida Democrats (@FlaDems) August 13, 2024From January through the end of July, Republicans registered over 169,000 new voters, according to Miami Herald calculations of Florida Department of Elections data. Republicans gained roughly 20,000 new voters per month from January to June, then more than doubled that number, gaining over 40,000 newly registered voters in July.
The Democrats’ numbers are “much more problematic,” according to University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. The party gained about 10,000 newly registered voters per month from January through June — and nearly 25,000 in July — but ended up losing around 12,000 voters overall, according to the Herald’s analysis of state data.
“This is something that is highly unusual,” Smith said.
Between January and July, almost 48,000 people switched their party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. Around 77,000 other voters switched from other parties to Republican.
Smith said some voters may have switched ahead of the Republican primary in March, particularly those who wanted to vote for or against Donald Trump, since Florida is a closed primary state where you have to be registered to the Republican or Democratic party to participate in their primary elections.
Despite Democrats’ claims that they are being disproportionately removed from voter rolls, Democrats and Republicans seem to be getting removed at a proportional rate. Between January and August, about 71,000 registered Republicans, 61,000 registered Democrats and almost 39,000 voters with no party affiliation were removed from the rolls. Removal from the voter rolls occurs when elections supervisors determine that a voter is no longer eligible or has been an inactive voter for two federal elections.
The shifting registration sceneNevertheless, Smith said he agreed with Democrats that the state has made it harder for canvassers to register new voters thanks to relatively recent legislation, namely SB 90 and SB 7050, which passed in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
With voter registration becoming a heavily digital process, pen-and-paper registration that third-party registration groups were previously so reliant on is getting wiped out.
“Voter registration is not fungible,” Smith said. “The [third-party voter registration groups] that are still around are effectively giving you a QR code to do [so] online.”
SB 7050 also created tougher criminal penalties and fines for violations by third-party voter registration groups. As a result, Democrats argue, many of those organizations stopped their voter registration work in Florida.
While there’s been a drop among voter registrations in all parties, Democrats have been hit especially hard. Smith said that’s for a variety of reasons but can largely be attributed to the party’s voter registration strategy and how it falters compared to the GOP’s advantage.
Registering to vote online in the state of Florida requires a driver’s license or Florida identification card. Smith said the DMV is a common site for voter registration and that older white voters who are more likely to be Republicans are also more likely to have a driver’s license, visit the DMV and update their registrations. Meanwhile, Democratic voters are a younger and more difficult population to reach. Smith said that past strategies have circled around getting new voters at college campuses, but the digital aspect of the voter registration process has hampered that as well.
“They don’t have a ground game in Florida,” Smith said of the Florida Democratic Party.
State Rep. Alex Rizo, the chairman of the Miami-Dade County Republican Party, pushed back on the notion that recent election law changes made things more difficult for Democrats, noting that Republicans have been steadily growing their numbers in the state “for years and years.”
“They can make excuses all they want, but the reality is that, for years, this has been the trend,” Rizo said. “People see what the Republican Party has been able to do when it comes to having candidates that are common sense, that talk to people, and go to Tallahassee and get to work.”
Evan Power, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said the GOP’s voter registration success boils down to the party’s policy platform.
“We find, and our success in voter registration demonstrates, that good, common-sense conservative policies drive good politics in Florida,” Power said in a statement to the Herald.
The new voters breakdownA Pew Research Center report last year found that 25% of Americans do not feel represented by the Republican or Democratic parties, with nearly 70% reporting they wish they had more parties to choose from.
In Florida, newly registered voters are reflecting a larger shift away from the traditional two-party system. In non-rural counties specifically, more new voters are registering with no party affiliation than with the Democratic Party.
Unsurprisingly, young voters make up the vast majority of new registrants, with 30% of newly registered voters since January falling into the 18-25 age bracket. More of those young voters are registering under a third party or with no party affiliation than with the two major parties, and Florida is seeing that pattern carry into other age groups as well. New NPA registrants now surpass Democrats in every age bucket, even narrowly outnumbering new Democratic registers in the 66-plus age group.
Active voters vs. full pictureThe latest data from the Florida Division of Elections, released earlier this month, shows there are about 1 million more active registered Republican voters than Democrats statewide. But Democratic leaders argue that the GOP’s reported advantage is misleading because it omits hundreds of thousands of inactive Democratic voters.
“This victory lap that the Republicans are taking, it’s all a farce because all of these numbers are not based on the individuals who have been removed from the [voter] roll,” state Sen. Shevrin Jones, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, said Sunday on CBS Miami’s “Facing South Florida.”
Democrats argue that state and county election departments are misleading the public by only reporting voters labeled as “active” — those who voted in a recent election or responded to mail from their local elections department. By doing so, Democrats argue, they exclude millions of “inactive” voters who remain eligible to cast their ballots.
“If they play by the rules, I promise you we would not see the million-voter registration number victory lap [Republicans are] taking right now,” Jones said in the TV interview.
The Herald used both active and inactive voters in its calculations. In the most recent data set, there were 263,339 more Democrats labeled as inactive than Republican registered voters. But when accounting for both active and inactive voters, Republicans still lead Democrats by 732,735 registered voters — a 4.5 percentage point difference.
In a memo released earlier this month, Florida Democratic Party Executive Director Phillip Jerez argued that the changes in state law that led to more voters being put on the inactive list disproportionately affected Democrats because of low Democratic voter turnout in 2022. Because so many Democrats sat out those elections, Jerez argued, more of them were labeled as inactive.
“As a result, Democrats are now disproportionately affected by these new laws … and marked as inactive at substantially higher rates — enabling Republicans to benefit from these voter suppression tactics and inflate their perceived voter registration lead,” Jerez wrote.
That’s not the only problem Democrats have pointed to. SB 90, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in 2021, canceled all standing requests for vote-by-mail ballots after the 2022 elections, requiring voters to request mail ballots every election cycle. That law also placed new restrictions on the use of ballot drop boxes that voters can use to return their mail ballots.
But Jerez argued in his memo that there are still reasons for Democrats to be optimistic. While inactive voters may not be listed in the topline registration totals posted by the state, he wrote, those people are still able to vote. He also asserted that Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy in the presidential race has given Democrats “a major boost of enthusiasm in Florida,” noting that more than 20,000 Floridians had signed up to volunteer for Harris’ campaign as of mid-August.
“The Florida Democratic Party has never been more organized to face the uphill battle ahead of us to close the gap and take back our state — that’s what Florida Democrats are going to be focused on from now until Election Day,” Jerez wrote.
BEHIND OUR REPORTING Miami Herald voter file calculationsAlthough the Florida Division of Elections publishes data that include only active voters on their site, the Herald includes active and inactive voters in all calculations and graphics, since inactive voters are still eligible to vote. The Herald used the voter extract file distributed by the Department of Elections for its calculations.
Voters are classified as inactive when an “address confirmation” final notice sent by election officials is returned “undeliverable” or fails to elicit a response within 30 days. If they do not return to the polls over the next two federal general elections, request a mail ballot or change their registration information, inactive voters are removed from the rolls.
This story was originally published August 27, 2024, 5:00 AM.
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