Voting by mail is popular in Florida, despite President Trump's criticisms

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of Florida voters cast their ballots by mail in the March primaries, up sharply from the less than one-third who did so only two years before in 2018's general election.

Now as coronavirus cases continue to climb, state elections officials say even more are likely to do so in November, making vote-by-mail a deciding factor in the 2020 race in Florida and, likely by extension, the country.

President Donald Trump has spent much of this year calling it a practice ripe for fraud. But in Florida, where mail-in ballots have been part of elections for a generation, the process is not a controversial one — even among the GOP.

Florida voting rights advocates, operatives from both parties, elections analysts and the state’s supervisors of elections consider it a non-issue. And most expect the process to run relatively smoothly, even if the 2020 presidential contest promises to be an unpredictable one.

“I don't think that by mail is controversial,” said Patti Brigham, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, speaking about the process in this state and elsewhere. “I do think it's being used as a partisan tool, which is extremely unfortunate. Spreading misinformation that vote by mail is fraudulent is a form of voter suppression. Because it's just not true.”

Trump, himself a 2018 voter by mail in Florida, has alleged that "universal mail-in voting" will cause "fraudulent" votes in 2020 and could even be counterfeited by foreign nations, something a number of fact-checkers have rated as false. He then suggested that the November election may even need to be delayed.

He backtracked on some of that criticism this month, saying that Florida's system, which he has participated in, is not the problem.

In an Aug. 4 tweet, the president called Florida’s system “Safe and Secure, Tried and True.”

Florida’s system of allowing voters to request a mail-in ballot for any reason is similar to those in 30 other states, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. (Florida did away with the term "absentee voting" in 2016, though it has had no-excuse-needed mailed votes for two decades.)

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last month was asked during a news conference about the president's comments, also expressed support for Florida's mail-in system.

"There's verification, and it's a process that I think has worked," he said. "And so I support Florida’s system. I would not support just mass mailing everyone a ballot regardless of whether they've asked for it.”

Five states have all-mail election systems: Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

Florida’s two-decade-old mail-in ballot system can handle an increase in such votes, said Craig Latimer, Hillsborough County's elections supervisor and president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, which represents supervisors in all 67 counties.

One key factor: Florida may begin verifying vote-by-mail ballots — such as making sure signatures match those on record — 22 days before the election. Those ballots are machine counted and preliminary returns are reported on election night after the polls close. Ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on election night.

“We've dealt with this. The only difference we're talking about here is a little bit of volume,” Latimer said. “We may have to do two shifts to get things done, but it's not something that's going to hold up and be a showstopper on election night.”

Potential problems

Still, voting by mail has had its problems. And some people worry that a sharp increase in such ballots could snarl the budget-strapped U.S. Postal System and add fuel to potential allegations of wrongdoing on election night if the vote is close.

A study conducted by the ACLU on the 2018 election found that voters were more likely to have their votes count if they filled out ballots at polling stations.

It also found that ballots cast by voters of color and those who are younger, first-time and overseas military voters were twice as likely as older and white voters to have their ballots rejected. The rejection rates also increased from the 2012 and 2016 elections, the study found.

For instance, 5.4% of ballots cast by voters between 18 and 21 were rejected in Florida's 2018 general election. Compare that to the rejection rates of those between 30 and 44 (2.1%) and those over 65 (0.6%). The rejection rate for all voters was 1.2%.

Blacks and Hispanics also had higher rejection rates than most voters in 2018. About 1.9% of mailed votes cast by Black voters were rejected, compared to 0.9% of whites' mailed votes. Hispanic voters had their mailed votes rejected 2.1% of the time.

The report did not give the reasons for all rejected votes, but it did note some common mistakes such as not updating signatures of record with local elections authorities to make sure signed ballots match them.

Voting by mail will be a first-time experience for many 2020 voters. Educating them about how to make sure their ballots will get counted is a key priority, groups representing Blacks and Hispanics say.

"Vote by mail signature matching is a very, very big deal," said Jared Nordlund, Florida state director for policy and advocacy for UnidosUS, the nation's largest Latino nonprofit advocacy organization. It's unclear how much of a role voting by mail will play with Florida's many Hispanic communities, he said.

"I think, by and large, we (traditionally) vote early or go to the polls on Election Day," he said. "We're much more of a younger community here in Florida, so it's not something we typically do."

Shirley Chapman, first vice president of the NAACP in Fort Myers, has been leading the vote-by-mail drive in that Gulf Coast community. Fear of the pandemic will likely drive an increase in Black votes by mail, she said.

"The signatures have to be the same, otherwise they will be rejected," Chapman said. "The sad part is sometimes you don't know. Hopefully (if there's a problem), you'll find out in time to get something done about it. So we're encouraging everybody to be sure to fill out their ballots and sign them the exact same way they did when they registered."

Voting rights groups and the state of Florida settled a lawsuit last month over concerns that "structural racism" existed in the voting system.

The voting groups had called for an extension of the voting by mail deadlines, free postage for mailers and allowing paid workers to collect mail-in ballots from voters.

While they didn't get everything they wanted, the groups said at the time they accepted the state's pledge that county supervisors of elections will work harder to educate voters about voting by mail and use as many early-voting days as are available.

Related coverage: Voting rights groups and state of Florida settle vote-by-mail lawsuit

More: Fact check: Voters should request ballots 2 weeks early, but mail isn't intentionally slow

More: Federal COVID-19 funds for Florida election supervisors delayed over a month, expected this week

The Republican Party, which sided with the state, also declared a victory. Trump alluded to it in his Aug. 4 tweet, and state Sen. Joe Gruters, the Florida GOP chair, told the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida this week that the decision helped maintain Florida's "fair" election system.

Some also worry that the financially strained U.S. Postal Service, which is charged with delivering ballots, could result in delayed deliveries to election offices and otherwise eligible ballots missing their tally deadlines.

Trump added fuel to those worries on Thursday when he told Fox Business that he opposes the Democrats' coronavirus relief bill because it would provide $25 billion to the postal service to help with the expected influx of ballots.

"Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said. "Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

Partisan divide in confidence?

The public seems to largely have confidence in the system.

A poll conducted in July by St. Pete Polls on behalf of the AARP and Florida Politics found that 65% of Florida voters are “very secure” or “mostly secure” about casting a vote by mail. Nearly half of the respondents said they plan to vote by mail this year. The poll has a margin of error of 1.8%.

The survey also found that 93% of Floridians are also confident in the validity of the state’s elections system.

But the survey did find a slightly negative shift in Republican views of voting by mail, said Zayne Smith, associate state director of advocacy for AARP Florida.

“We certainly are finding people not trusting the process and maybe a little bit dissuaded from voting by mail because of different comments, whether it be from the president, from party leaders on either side of the aisle," Smith said.

Another poll, conducted by the University of Florida in late July, suggests the partisan divide on mail voting may be growing.

While it found that more than 60% of Floridians plan to vote by mail in November, that intention is far stronger among Democrats (79.1%) and those with no stated party affiliation (64.7%), compared to 44.5% of Republicans who plan to do so.

Only 14% of Republicans said their means of voting would change compared to 2016. Three times as many Democrats and nearly the same number of unaffiliated voters have said they are likely to vote differently, the poll found.

"The President’s supporters are less likely to say they’re worried about their health when it comes to voting, and less likely to say they will change their vote method from four years ago," Daniel Smith, chairman of the University of Florida Political Science Department, said in a news release. "The President has been railing against voting by mail, Republican voters have been listening; his latest equivocation is likely too little, too late.”

As of this week, Florida Republicans trailed Democrats in mail-in ballot requests by nearly 432,000.

That may be why Trump changed his tune on voting by mail, at least as it relates to Florida, said Joshua Scacco, an associate professor at the University of South Florida who studies political communication strategies.

He noted that the GOP traditionally led on voting by mail in the state.

"The Republican Party of Florida has gamed its operations so much around mail voting, and banking those votes early, that what they're going to have to do is shift their operation to get voters out in a different way," Scacco said. "So what the president has done is make it harder for Republicans to actually win the state."

A key get-out-the-vote strategy?

The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered how campaigns traditionally have tried to get out the vote.

Gone are mass rallies drawing hundreds or thousands of supporters. And encouraging people to stand in lines at polling stations is potentially dangerous in a state demographically older than much of the country.

The Joe Biden campaign has decided to forgo door-to-door voter canvassing, believing it could endanger volunteers and residents, said Kevin Muñoz, Biden's Florida spokesman. The president's continued criticism of voting by mail is harmful and is an attempt to suppress voting, he said.

"Time and time again, Donald Trump has shown his lack of reliability and inconsistencies on so many issues important to our community. When it comes to the act of voting — the very core of our democracy — we cannot afford to have inconsistencies that undermine our community's faith and trust in participating in the democratic process," Muñoz said. "Vote-by-mail is safe."

Gruters, the Florida GOP chair, said the Democratic Party's emphasis on voting by mail can't match the enthusiasm Florida GOP voters have for Trump. Republicans have more than 180 people canvassing door-to-door, he said, while Biden "hides in his basement."

Encouraging voters to cast ballots by mail, while important, isn't the GOP's priority, he said.

"When you have low voter intensity like the Democrats have, they need to do everything they can to try to get as many voters to the polls as we can on our side," Gruters said. "Our intensity is off the charts. People love the president."

Whomever Floridians vote for this fall, August's primaries are suggesting many more may do so by mail.

As of Aug. 13, two days before the end of early voting and five days before the primary, more than 1.8 million had voted by mail, according to state statistics. That's compared to the 321,624 who had voted early.

More Democrats voted by mail — 913,496 versus the GOP's 643,663. And more Republicans voted in person — 179,688 versus the Democrats' 122,016.

Frank Gluck is a watchdog reporter with The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Connect with him at fgluck@news-press.com or on Twitter: @FrankGluck

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Voting by mail remains popular in Florida despite Trump's criticism