By Phoebe Martel
(Source: WUSF)
With just over two months to go until the primary election, disability rights and senior advocates fear that many Florida voters won’t renew their ballot requests in time to vote from home.
In 2021, Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 90, a law requiring Floridians to renew their vote-by-mail ballot requests after each general election – every two years.
Previously, registered voters had to do so every four years.
Officials in Hillsborough, Pasco, and Pinellas counties are reporting a steep drop-off in mail-in ballot requests for August’s midterm primary election.
Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley said that his office has received over 22,000 mail-in ballot requests to date.
At the same point in the 2024 general election, that figure was at 77,000.
Corley partially attributed the decline to politicians’ claims that voting by mail opens the floodgates to fraud.
“We are going to do some outreach initiatives to remind voters that it is a safe and secure vote and a popular way, so hopefully we’ll get those numbers back up,” Corley said.
Across the Tampa Bay region, the numbers paint a more complex picture — in Sarasota County, the volume of mail-in ballot requests is fairly consistent with the same period in 2024.
Paul Donnelly, a spokesperson for the county’s elections supervisor, said all registered voters received Notice of Elections mailers to remind them of the change.
In 2021, the Florida NAACP and Disability Rights Florida filed a joint lawsuit challenging SB 90 on the grounds that its mail-in ballot restrictions disproportionately affect lower-income individuals.
A U.S. District judge originally found the law improperly discriminated against Black voters, but the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned his ruling.
Advocates say senior Americans and those with disabilities face socioeconomic disadvantages that can complicate the renewal process. People with disabilities are twice as likely as their peers to live below the low-income threshold, while adults over 65 are the highest-poverty age group in Florida.
With just over two months until August’s midterm primary election, voting rights advocates fear many mail-in voters will fall through the cracks of the renewal requirement.
“We know that for people with disabilities, there’s something called the information gap. So, even though we’re in such a digital world, where you can do these things semi-easily, a lot of folks face barriers to doing so online.”Laura-Lee Minutello, public policy analyst
Felicia Bruce, president of the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans (FLARA), worries that many seniors don’t know they have to take this step.
“We should be making it easier to participate in our democracy, not harder,” Bruce said. “It’s a frustrating time for seniors.”
Bruce added seniors who’ve lost their driving privileges or paper records during hurricanes won’t be able to verify their identity.
Disability Rights Florida public policy analyst Laura-Lee Minutello also emphasized the renewal form assumes reliable access to supporting documentation and digital technology.
Living with a disability means a voter may not have either, particularly if they live in a limited-broadband area, cannot pay for the internet or don’t have a driver’s license.
“We know that for people with disabilities, there’s something called the information gap,” Minutello explained. “So, even though we’re in such a digital world, where you can do these things semi-easily, a lot of folks face barriers to doing so online.”
Like seniors, many disabled voters prefer to vote at home, avoiding the burdens of navigating public transportation or finding in-person voting assistance.
Minutello, who has cerebral palsy, said she doesn’t think lawmakers are necessarily targeting her and other voters with disabilities, but their needs aren’t being properly addressed.
“We just aren’t thought of in terms of a population,” she said. “They will make these changes to voting law and not even think about the barriers they’re creating.”
In April, the Florida NAACP and FLARA filed a separate federal lawsuit contesting HB 991, which would purge voter rolls and require Floridians to prove their citizenship.
Lower-income individuals without driver’s licenses, who could previously use retirement center and veterans’ health IDs to vote by mail, will need to get a passport, which costs around $165.
Bruce believes Florida’s Republican supermajority is targeting seniors as a voting bloc.
“In the past, we seniors were reliable voters; that has changed in the last two election cycles, and that’s another reason they’re expanding their voter suppression tactics,” Bruce said. “They’re becoming more inclined to vote Democratic because the policies are directly hurting their pocketbooks.”
Corley, while a registered Republican, emphasizes the election supervisor’s office is nonpartisan, even as national politicians try to discredit his work.
He said that it’s Floridians’ duty to vote in the midterms and urged people to reach out to his office for assistance with mail-in ballots.
“The importance of county commissioners, school boards — the impact they have on the day-to-day lives of citizens and voters — is more than a president, for example,” Corley said.
The deadline to request a mail-in ballot for the Florida primary election is August 6 at 5 p.m., and voters must return the ballot no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day, August 18.
