Florida Voters Getting Lots of Help – Whether They Like It or Not

[Image courtesy of wikipedia]

Even as Florida’s Governor and the U.S. Department of Justice square off on the legality of the state’s efforts to identify and remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, some Sunshine State voters are now dealing with a mailing that also focuses on voter eligibility and registration.

From the Miami Herald:

Jacqueline Paulausky has been a registered voter in Florida since she moved to the state in 1981.

So when she received a voter registration form in the mail recently, the 72-year-old Democrat was suspicious. The document, which looked official, asked her to affirm that she was a U.S. citizen and that she hadn’t committed a felony.

None of her neighbors got one. Nor did her husband. She had eight days to turn in the papers to the state’s Division of Elections, the instructions told her.

“I thought I was being picked out of a group,” Paulausky said.

She was. Just not in the way she feared.

Similar forms were sent to more than 420,000 people in Florida this month. But the sender was the Voter Participation Center, a Washington group that’s trying to increase — not decrease — voting among women and minorities.

“Really?” Paulausky said. “Maybe they should have been more clear.”

The Herald article goes on to describe the process by which the Center built its mailing list, and its efforts to coordinate the legality of its mailings with election officials. Obviously, though, there are problems with the list and voters – already on edge because of all the other controversies currently raging in the state – aren’t pleased.

Most striking to me was the following passage where the Secretary of State – who had nothing to do with the mailing other than being named on the forms – was the target of an angry email from a voter:

Another mailer sent reached Brett Geer in Tampa. It was addressed to his former wife, whom he divorced in 2001 in Pinellas County. She’s never lived at his Tampa address.

Because of how official the form looks, Geer directed his ire at the man who oversees the state’s Division of Elections, Secretary of State Ken Detzner.

“It is disconcerting not to have the faintest idea how my former spouse’s name came to be associated by anyone, anyhow, with my address,” Geer wrote Detzner in an email.

This story is a perfect example of the new reality of elections. Election administrators are strongly discouraged from engaging in campaign activities and/or being partisan (and with good reason) – but there is nothing to prevent campaign and/or partisan groups from involving themselves (or “helping”) with election administration.

The challenge going forward will be to ensure that these “helpers” are using tools and information that are not only current but can communicate with the same tools and information available to election officials.

Otherwise, you can’t blame voters for feeling – like the voters described in the Herald article – that they don’t need any more help, thank you.