Letter: Please donate to SOE Candidate Judith Jensen’s filing fee

Letter to the editor

Our friend Judith Jensen filed as a candidate for the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) in July of 2023. Supervisor Kim Barton ran unopposed in 2020, and Jensen is the only Republican candidate to run for this important position since 2004.

Ms. Jensen worked diligently to gather the required 1,809 petitions needed to qualify for inclusion on the November 2024 ballot, submitting a total of 1,997 signed petitions to the SOE office by the May 13, 2024 deadline, more than the 1,809 required. Because petitions had been solicited for over 10 months, there were 78 duplicates from people who had forgotten they signed one. A total of 256 petitions were rejected by the SOE office, leaving Jensen with only 1,741 accepted, and she failed to qualify by petition to be included on the ballot. The only alternative is to pay $10,112 to qualify. Please visit her website, Jensen 4 Alachua Supervisor of Elections , and contribute.

Any SOE challenger is in the unique position of having their petitions judged by those currently holding the office. There is no avenue for appealing any decisions rejecting the signed petitions. It appears to be an ethical conflict of interest from which the incumbent should recuse themselves and have an impartial party making determinations of acceptance.

Many of the rejections hinged on signature verification – whether the signature on the petition matched the signature on record. For a fee, Ms. Jensen was allowed to compare the 60 rejected signatures with those on file. Many had consistent characteristics in her opinion, based on her signature training. However, only one signature per signer (perhaps many years old) was available for viewing.

According to statistics provided by the SOE office, county-wide results for the election of November 2020 showed that 49 of the vote-by-mail ballots out of 61,819 received were rejected for signatures not matching. This was a 0.079% rejection rate and was the exact same percentage for the November 2022 election (25/31,463). So the signature rejection rate for her petitions being 60 out of 1,919 (3%) was unexpectedly high if the same criteria were utilized.

Keeping in mind that petitions have numerous fields to be completed and people are signing on clipboards at festivals, porches, etc., the level of attention to detail is often less than the two items on a vote-by-mail envelope: signature and date. In contrast, when determining whether to accept the signature on vote-by-mail ballots, the canvassing board may accept a signature based on finding ANY similarity in the signatures. Almost all the signatures that were challenged by election integrity citizen observers were overridden by this process.

The more senior voters who completed the petitions stand to be disenfranchised by not giving them some latitude for their age. Signatures change significantly over time, especially if the original registration signature is old. In some instances, voters filled in the “birthdate” box with the correct month and date but put 2024 as the year. Voter intent was not considered; the date was incorrect, and the petition was rejected. One lady accidentally put an extra “1” in the voter ID number, and the petition was rejected despite everything else being correct.

Alachua County voters deserve to have a choice for Supervisor of Elections in November. Judith Jensen is committed to public service in that capacity, but she needs financial help to pay the qualifying fee on June 11. If you want the opportunity to vote for a diligent election integrity advocate, go to her website Jensen 4 Alachua Supervisor of Elections and make a contribution. You won’t regret it.

Jean DeSerio, Gainesville
Marian Lee, Gainesville
Lizabeth Doebler, Micanopy

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