A key part of the election season lead-up has disappeared this summer across Florida, with voter registration by grassroots groups all but halted because of a new state law many say targets minorities and younger voters.
The number of voters registered by so-called third-party organizations is down dramatically. Just over 7,000 voters have been enrolled through the end of June by these groups, compared with almost 60,000 during the 2020 presidential election year, state records show.
The League of Women Voters of Florida, the NAACP, and dozens of community- and college-based organizations historically enroll hard-to-reach Black, Hispanic and first-time voters, helping them complete registration forms at fish fries, picnics and even by going door-to-door.
This year, though, most of these organizations have stopped their registration drives. Their leaders say they’re scared.
It’s the first election since Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through a law imposing massive financial penalties against groups that stray from an exacting series of deadlines and requirements.
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“The new law really hinders the voter registration process. It’s just a mess,” said Cynthia Slater of Daytona Beach, who has helped register voters for more than 30 years with the state’s NAACP.
With aggressive voter drives shelved this summer, Slater and others have been forced mostly to to encourage potential voters to reach out to their local election supervisors to register.
Some groups share website information or QR links to supervisors’ offices. But few of these low-budget, volunteer-driven organizations are helping potential voters complete registration forms, then collect and deliver these applications to supervisors’ offices as they did for years.
“We’re basically handing out voter applications to people and kind of praying that they send them in,” Slater conceded.
An analysis by University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith shows that more than 763,000 voters in the state have registered through outside groups, dubbed 3PVROs (third-party voter registration organizations). Accusations that racial and partisan motives drove Republicans to undercut registrations are rooted in state data.
Data shows racial, partisan divide
One-in-10 Black voters and the same share of Hispanic voters in Florida were registered through 3PVROs. By contrast, fewer than one-in-50 white voters who became eligible to vote were assisted by these groups, according to elections records.
No surprise to critics, the voting cohorts disrupted by the 2023 Florida law also tend to vote Democratic.
“It’s doing exactly what the Republican state Legislature and Gov. DeSantis hoped it would do,” Smith said of the law clamping down on voter groups.
Florida Republicans have enacted a series of laws since the 2020 election which they portray as enhancing confidence in elections. They also reflect the unfounded doubts raised by former President Donald Trump about the integrity of elections.
With Trump now formally named the Republican nominee for president, the laws in place in Florida may help him in November. The state’s new requirements for 3VPROs come on top of limits on mail-in ballots and drop boxes and the creation of a new Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate allegations of illegal voting.
During debate last year on the new demands placed on voter registration groups, Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, accused ruling Republicans of trying to “make sure that only certain people vote.”
Senate Ethics and Elections Chair Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, pushed back: “There is nothing in this bill that makes it harder for a lawfully registered voter to cast their ballot,” he said.
Was law designed to undermine grassroots groups?
Voting activists, though, say the law was intended to undermine grassroots activists.
The GOP supermajority in the Legislature pushed through the measure “to have a chilling effect on third-party voter registration groups, and unfortunately it’s working,” said Brad Ashwell, Florida director of the All Voting is Local, a national organization that advances pro-voter policies.
Among the changes included in the new law: State election officials can now fine groups as much as $2,500 for each voter registration application submitted more than 10 days after completed, with the penalties tolling at $50 each day late.
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Fines get even steeper if those helping individuals fail to turn in voter applications before registration deadlines or willfully don't submit applications. Total annual fines can climb to $250,000 for each organization. Voter applicants are to be given a paper receipt when registering.
One of the harsher penalties in the law, subjecting groups to $50,000 fines for allowing non-citizens to help with voter registration, was blocked by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in May.
The Florida League of Women Voters and other groups had sued, claiming the new law and its penalties were overbroad, vague and violated First Amendment rights to free speech. A trial in Tallahassee took place in April.
But the initial court victory on the non-citizen provision may have made little difference to groups challenging the law, since so many registration efforts are now on ice.
Court victory means little now
“We realize that not using paper applications is limiting our ability to register many Black and brown communities and Latinx communities and we are anxiously awaiting some relief from the court, based on the trial,” said Cecile Scoon, the League’s co-president.
Scoon said the League stopped collecting paper voter registration applications because it was wary of having the organization and its members slapped with crippling fines for any misstep: “There was too much risk all around.”
State Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat, is still registering voters through People Power for Florida, an organization she founded and that is active across Central Florida and college campuses. But Eskamani acknowledges she has had to rely on a smaller group of trained activists familiar with the new law.
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“It’s so unpredictable,” she said, “regardless of how careful you are, how you train your staff and volunteers, double-check everything. ... The environment has been intentionally designed to make this work almost impossible to do.”
John Kennedy and James Call report for the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau and based in Tallahassee. Kennedy can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com , and follow him on X at @JKennedyReport . Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee .
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Grassroots groups end voter registration drives, fearing Florida law pushed by GOP
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