Surprise Florida election bill could suppress student, minority vote, critics say

A Florida elections bill introduced in the Senate this week could make it harder for college students to vote and add more restrictions to third-party registration groups, which opponents say amounts to more voter suppression.

The package, the third of its kind in three years, is the latest being pushed by the Republican-led Legislature.

The state Senate Ethics and Elections Committee voted to move forward on the bill on Tuesday, just a day after it was submitted by the committee itself to the surprise of its Democratic members.

The bill “builds on the work of past sessions by continuing the commitment to the security of vote by mail ballots, ensuring the accuracy of Florida’s voter rolls and safeguarding voter confidence,” said state Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, the committee chair.

Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, asked why the 98-page measure was submitted so late in the session, with just one day’s notice before its first hearing, and Burgess said, “to sum it up in one word, I would say prudence.”

But Polsky questioned Burgess’ answer, saying, “if this bill was so benign, we would have seen it a lot earlier.”

“Every change I’ve seen in my five years in the Legislature has been intentional to hurt one party over the other,” Polsky said. “So there’s just not a lot of trust here. Some of the words may appear to be technical and not hurting [someone] or the other. But I know that’s not where the intent is, or where the end result will be.”

Burgess denied allegations from speakers that it was a voter suppression bill.

“Florida is the gold standard for elections,” he said. “... That doesn’t mean that after you win the Super Bowl, you don’t watch the tape and improve.”

The bill includes a provision that would add stricter identification requirements for first-time voters in Florida who don’t have either a verified Social Security number, a valid Florida driver’s license, or a Florida ID card.

They could provide another form of identification to vote, but even if they do, the bill states they would have to vote in person and not by mail.

State Democratic chair Nikki Fried tweeted on Monday that the bill was aimed at college students, who she said would be “forced to go home to vote. … All the college kids that move to Florida from out of state and want to vote by mail are going also to be f***ed.”

Sen. Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach, asked if the provision would affect students with a Social Security card “who go away to college who haven’t voted but may want to vote by mail for the first time.”

Burgess responded the provision only affects “a really small pool of people.”

But Jayden D’Onofrio, president of Florida Voters of Tomorrow, told the committee the provision would impact “tens of thousands of students from out-of-state. ... Now they’re going to be moving here for the fall semesters and will not have a Florida ID or Florida driver’s license and will now be required to get that in order to register.”

Democratic senators and other speakers also voiced their concerns about additional restrictions on third-party registration groups.

The 2021 election law forced outside groups to register students in their home counties’ elections offices, instead of letting the local office enter them into the state system. The groups face fines of $500 to $1,000 for each application not submitted to a person’s home county.

The new bill adds to that by requiring such groups to provide a receipt for each application, which would then start the clock on a reduced 10-day period, down from 14 days, in which to submit the application to the voter’s county.

Secretary of State Cord Byrd said the receipt was “an accountability measure for the voter.” A voter could have proof an organization who had signed them up had failed to turn in their application, Byrd said, “and then we could then investigate or hold them accountable in some way.”

Political parties, however, are exempt from having to provide a receipt.

Daniel Smith, the chair of political science at the University of Florida, told the Orlando Sentinel his research shows the goal of the change could be to make it harder for minorities to register.

His report from 2021 showed that while only 2 out of every 100 white voters in Florida were registered by such third-party groups, one out of 10 black voters and one out of 10 Hispanic voters were.

“That’s what they’re going after,” Smith said.

Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, told the committee the bill was “extremely punitive to the third party voter organizations.”

“The League is one and we’ve trained many others,” Scoon said. “They have come to us and they said they can’t bear the burden that the state is unfairly putting on them with these increased fines, little churches, little organizations that are … trying to help the people.”