By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Nearly 1 million registered voters have been dropped from Florida’s active voter rolls since last year, with Democrats and voters with no party affiliation (NPA) accounting for about 90 percent of the departed.
Statistics compiled by the Florida Division of Elections show the total number of registered active voters in the state fell from 14,536,811 to 13,540,135 as of Dec. 1. That’s a reduction of 996,676, to about the same number of active registered voters as in 2019 – even as the U.S. Census Bureau reported earlier this year that Florida is once again the fastest-growing state in the nation. Florida’s estimated population was 22.2 million as of July 1, 2022.
The drop is traceable to this year’s enactment of Senate Bill 7050, a package of Republican-led reforms that among other things toughened requirements for maintaining lists of voters – a move that opponents feared could lead to some voters having their registrations wrongly purged. Those lists are kept by county supervisors of elections.
Voter records from South Florida’s three most populous counties reveal similar declines. In Miami-Dade 85,640 voters were moved from active to inactive status, with 90.75 percent being Democrats and NPAs; in Broward, 190,876 were moved to inactive status, with 84.24 percent being Democrats and NPAs; in Palm Beach, the active voter rolls were sliced by 156,148 voters, 82.75 percent of whom were registered Democrats or NPAs.
Florida’s chief election officer, Secretary of State Cord Byrd, was unavailable for comment. But department external affairs director Mark Ard said, “Supervisors of Elections perform list maintenance after election cycle years to ensure their voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date. Pursuant to section 98.065 F.S., they’re required to send notices to voters who have not voted in the past 2 election cycles [among other reasons].
The post Election integrity or voter suppression? Florida has 1 million fewer voters in 2023 appeared first on Florida Bulldog.
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
