Voting rights groups call on FL elected officials to combat election disinformation

This man attended a press conference held by the Pinellas Watchdog group in front the Pinellas County Courthouse on April 24, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)

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With concerns about election dis- and misinformation coursing through the election cycle this year, a group of Florida voting rights and social justice groups are calling on every state and county elected official to be aware of election laws and communicate that information accurately to their constituents.

More than two dozen groups — led by All Voting is Local Florida, the NAACP Florida State Conference, Common Cause Florida, and the ACLU of Florida — have written a letter to state legislators and county commissioners stressing the critical role that they play in combating bogus information.

“While dis- and misinformation about our elections have circulated for many years, the 2020 election acted as the impetus for sowing doubt regarding the safety and security of our voting systems, particularly in relation to falsehoods perpetuated around the safety and reliability of vote-by-mail ballots,” the missive begins.

“All election disinformation is dangerous; according to POLITICO, ‘disinformation alone has now become the single biggest threat to electoral integrity in many countries around the world, meaning that what election authorities have traditionally seen as their biggest obligation — organizing technically competent free and fair elections — is no longer enough.’”

The letter lists nine specific problems that lawmakers should be versed in, including voter list maintenance; logic and accuracy testing of voting equipment; paper ballots; reporting of vote-by-mail count; recounts; certification; audits; hand counts; and mass challenges.

Take hand counts, for example — Florida law does not allow that, although many “election integrity” advocates have been pushing for it since the 2020 election. A bill sponsored by Pinellas County Republican Berny Jacques and Lake County Republican Taylor Yarkowsky in the state House ( HB 359 ) would have authorized counties to hand count ballots at the precinct level, but it never received a hearing in any committee during the most recent legislative session.

Regarding maintenance of voter rolls, the groups note that “[it’s] particularly important to underscore that unless the voter requests it in written form, the voter moves out of the state or passes away, or the voter is determined to be ineligible, their name may not be removed from the statewide voter registration system any later than 90 days before the date of a federal election. For the August 20th Primary Election, the 90-day deadline was May 22, 2024.”

Mass challenges

And regarding mass challenges, the letter tells lawmakers that they may receive lists from private organizations or individuals naming potentially ineligible voters and asking that election officials remove them from the voting rolls. The groups’ response?

“First, it’s important to understand that Florida law prohibits the use of non-governmental entities to conduct list maintenance,” they write.

“These types of lists aim to circumvent Florida laws governing the voter challenge process, and forwarding these requests to election officials validates these individuals’ actions. Florida law only permits challenges during a 30-day window before and on election day, and they must come from a registered voter or poll watcher from the same county as the voter who is being challenged. Challenges must be delivered to the supervisor of elections or to the clerk or inspector at a polling place not emailed en masse to other officials.”

The letter comes as an insurgent group of Republican challengers are running for county supervisor of elections on a platform questioning the operations of individual incumbent supervisors throughout the state, with most of those candidates strongly disputing the results of the 2020 presidential election, as the Phoenix reported last month.

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