A recent change in state law has led to a dramatic drop in the number of Miami-Dade voters requesting mail-in ballots, leaving county officials and political organizations scrambling to make up the difference.
As of Tuesday, about 194,000 voters in Miami-Dade County had requested mail-in ballots, Elections Inspector Christina White told the Miami Herald. Compare that to 2022, when nearly 440,000 voters registered to receive mail-in ballots.
While White’s office is trying to remind voters interested in casting their ballots by mail to submit their requests as early as possible, she said the decline has made it difficult to plan for this year’s election, including the upcoming vote in August, when prominent offices across the county — including the mayor of Miami-Dade — will be up for grabs.
“In the past, I had a pretty good idea of how many people had submitted requests, so I could plan accordingly,” White said. “At the moment I don’t have a good idea of how many people will actually vote by mail.”
Declining mail-in voting requests could complicate or change strategies for campaigns and candidates who target mail-in voters with ads and pitches. It also makes it difficult for election officials to estimate total voter turnout. White said it’s unclear whether voters are aware they need to request a mail-in ballot, or if more people are simply choosing to vote in person — early or on Election Day.
“What we don’t know is that people have changed their minds? White said. “Do they decide to go in person now, or do they just not know they need to register?”
Although maligned across the country, mail-in ballots have helped shorten lines at polling places and Election Day precincts in Miami-Dade and Florida, raising questions about whether a decline in mail-in voting could lead to longer lines . vote in person. But White said she is confident her office will be able to avoid the kind of nightmare scenario that occurred in 2012, when Miami-Dade’s general election was hampered by hours-long wait times at polling places and a last-minute surge in number of absentees. ballots and technological issues that delayed the counting of final votes.
She noted that things are different now: the early voting period is longer now than it was then, voter check-in is done electronically instead of manually and there are more early voting sites.
“There were variables then that no longer exist,” White said. “We look at history, we look at voter behavior, we add a lot of math to this so that we are ready for turnout.”
‘A solution seeks a problem’
The sudden decline in mail-in ballots stems from a measure signed into law more than three years ago that requires Florida voters to re-register to receive mail-in ballots for each election cycle, and existing requests after the has canceled the 2022 elections.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers announced the law as an effort to protect elections from potential voter fraud following former President Donald Trump’s baseless complaints that the 2020 election was marred by fraud and malfeasance, especially if it involved early and mail-in voting.
That year, as the pandemic led political parties to aggressively push mail-in voting, some 665,000 voters in Miami-Dade requested a mail-in ballot. In total, more than 4.8 million Floridians voted by mail in 2020.
The measure — SB 90 — was roundly criticized by some election officials and voting rights groups in Florida as unnecessarily burdensome on voters and rooted in the false idea that elections are full of uncertainties. White on Tuesday called the law “a solution in search of a problem.”
Ibis Valdes, president of the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade County, said even now, many voters are unaware that their mail-in voting requests are no longer on file.
“Life is hard,” she said. “When you’re sitting at the kitchen table and sorting out your utility bills and your mortgage – there’s so many things that re-registering to vote by mail is just a nuisance, without any reason that’s rooted in fact.”
Valdes said her organization is already contacting voters to remind them to request their ballot if they plan to vote by mail. White said her office has been doing the same thing for more than a year, sending mailers to voters and, in some cases, reaching out by phone and email.
Candidates and parties can also play a role in encouraging people to vote by mail, White said. Even Trump — who for years railed against early absentee voting and voting by mail as a threat to election integrity — has started encouraging his supporters to vote any way they can.
“Absentee voting, early voting and Election Day voting are all good options. REPUBLICANS MUST MAKE A PLAN, REGISTER AND VOTE!” Trump wrote last month on his social media site Truth Social.
White said she is hopeful that mail-in ballot requests will begin to increase after June 14, the deadline for candidates for county offices to qualify for the August ballot, as political party campaigns expand their voter reach.
Alex Rizo, chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party in Florida, said his party has already begun that work. He said party members have distributed mail-in ballot forms to voters throughout Miami-Dade County, and predicted the number of registered requests would increase, especially as the August election approaches.
“There is confidence here in our elections department and in our secretary of state’s office to ensure that we have the most secure elections in the entire country,” Rizo said.
