Florida’s polarizing new election law wraps up county supervisors in burdensome and contradictory red tape

Florida’s polarizing new election law wraps up county supervisors in burdensome and contradictory red tape

Tallahassee, Fl – Florida’s polarizing new election law wraps up county supervisors in burdensome and contradictory red tape, more duties and responsibilities that will cause unforeseen costs and penalties for noncompliance, elections officials said.

And, they added, it will make it harder for people to vote by mail and get those votes tabulated by the deadline set down in state elections law.

Republican and Democratic supervisors spent hours talking to state legislators about how bad the proposed legislation was and how it would impact voters. They called it problematic. They said it was poorly thought out legislation for a problem that didn’t exist.

To a degree, legislators took some of the “most disenfranchising” proposals out of the bill (SB 90), said Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, also the outgoing president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections Association.

One proposal they saw as particularly onerous would have canceled millions of vote-by-mail requests already on file for 2022, and cost $14 million to $16 million to notify everyone affected, according to Alan Hays, a former state legislator and the supervisor of elections for predominantly Republican Lake County. He spoke before lawmakers during this year’s session.

But, Latimer added in an April 30 letter to the Legislature, the final bill “still makes requesting vote-by-mail ballots and returning those ballots harder.”

The Treasure Coast’s three elections supervisors — including Democrat Gertrude Walker from St. Lucie County — were reluctant to criticize the new law. Walker, for one, said she would have a better understanding of its requirements after attending a Division of Elections workshop next month.

Similarly, Vicki Davis, Martin County’s Republican supervisor of elections, said she will get more answers at the Florida Supervisors of Elections annual summer conference June 13-17 in Tampa.

Many of the new requirements address mail-voting ballots, including how they’re dropped off. She said 40% of Martin County’s vote in November was by vote-by-mail ballots, and there were no issues.

Still, Davis said, she anticipates increased costs, but could not quantify them.

Although Martin County has no outdoor drop boxes for ballots, the new requirement for 24-hour in-person monitoring of indoor boxes is “still going to affect our budgets in some way.” 

Indian River County Supervisor of Elections Leslie Swan, also a Republican, declined to comment on the new law because she already is named as a defendant in two lawsuits challenging the law and a third effort could create a class-action suit against all 67 Florida supervisors of elections.

Swan, however, already anticipated added costs for the Aug. 23 primary: monitoring of the three early-voting vote-by-mail drop boxes for eight 8 days, $2,400; and monitoring of the drop box at the Supervisor of Elections Office, $3,443.

Correcting and resending mail ballots during the 2020 primary cost $2,882, she said, and changes in the law should reduce that cost.

Across the state, opinions of other supervisors of elections ranged from wait-and-see to outright criticism of SB 90, which already faces at least three legal challenges on the grounds it is unconstitutional and has advocacy groups publishing ads urging Florida corporations to denounce it.

“It was political theater without a doubt,” said Mark Earley, Supervisor of Elections in predominantly Democratic Leon County and the supervisor association’s vice president. “There was no fraud.”