ORLANDO, Fla. — As mail-in ballots start to come in and early voting begins, Republicans in Central Florida are taking advantage of the new election law to challenge mail-in ballots as the number of partisan poll watchers also has increased, according to Central Florida election officials.
This year is the first statewide election season since two new laws were passed by Republican lawmakers and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis despite their praise of how smoothly the 2020 vote went in Florida. The changes drastically reduced the use of drop boxes, imposed limits on dropping off ballots and required voters to re-apply to vote by mail every two years.
But the law also requires supervisors to give “reasonable access” to partisan and other outside observers to “review or inspect ballot materials,” including mail-in envelopes and signatures. That has had the greatest effect.
In Central Florida, Orange County Republicans created an Elections Integrity Task Force to dispute mail-in ballots before they’re opened, leading to dozens of such challenges during the August primary.
The task force was back for the general election this week. It challenged 35 signatures on envelopes as not matching those on file for voters.
“They’re calling them ‘protests,’” said Orange County elections supervisor Bill Cowles, a Democrat. “Not ‘challenges,’ but ‘protests.’”
Of the 35, he said, the canvassing board, “the canvassing board approved or validated our work on 24. And there were 11 that the canvassing board agreed that the voter needed to do a signature cure affidavit.”
Voters whose ballots are rejected over signature mismatches or other issues would need to complete an affidavit by Nov. 10, the Thursday after Election Day, to prove their identity and have their votes count.
So far, however, there have been no similar challenges in Osceola, Lake or Seminole counties.
“I assume that part of it is also to gain a partisan advantage, depending on where you are challenging ballots,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. “And so if you’re Republicans, challenging ballots in Orange County, a heavily Democratic area, you sort of figure that the law of averages is that more of the [ballots] challenged that are actually excluded would be from Democrats than Republicans. You just play the odds, I assume.”
The increase in such tactics comes after former President Donal Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election galvanized his supporters to question longstanding election processes, Jewett said. But it soon could just become standard procedure for elections.
“I think this will become part of the election strategy, particularly for the Republican Party,” Jewett said. “But I expect over time that Democrats will also begin to do the same. Not because they think that there is massive amounts of fraud, but only because they figure the Republicans are out there challenging a lot of ballots, and they should maybe do the same.”
At the same time, the number of partisan poll watchers is increasing in Osceola and Lake counties.
In Lake County, supervisor Alan Hays, a Republican, said before early voting began that there was a major influx of GOP requests to observe ballots being cast.
“Oh, good gracious, yeah,” Hays said. “A huge, huge, huge number of Republican people wanting to be poll watchers.”
His office has been trying to educate watchers on the ins and outs of the election process.
“We put together a 28-minute video that we put on our website that shows the potential poll watcher what they’re going to be seeing or what they may be seeing,” Hays said. “We tried to cover as many different scenarios as we could … so they will be familiar when they see an event occur at a polling place. They won’t have to go ask someone, ‘What was that all about?’ Just calm down, you saw that in the video. This is probably what it was. And it’s no big deal.”
But, he added, “We will not tolerate confrontations. If anybody gets too feisty, they will be dismissed as poll watchers. They will not be allowed back in the polling place.”
So far, as early voting begins in the county, “We’ve had nothing but good experiences,” Hays said. “Everything here in Lake County has gone very smoothly. It’s been a very pleasant few days for us.”
In Osceola County, “We definitely have had an increase in the number of poll watchers,” said supervisor Mary Jane Arrington. “We only have a few from the candidates, but we have a lot from the two parties that have been approved. And I think they’ve pretty much been constantly in place as the early voting sites.”
In Orange, however, Cowles said that the number of poll watchers was not out of the ordinary, with both the Republican and Democratic parties sending people to oversee balloting. Seminole is the same so far, its elections spokesman said.
Supervisors have also had to deal with shady phone calls to voters.
Hays has warned about emails and calls from groups supposedly trying to “clean up” voter rolls. Hays said the groups are contributing “to the erosion of voter confidence and misinformation which continues to plague our elections system.”
“They basically tell folks that they might be victims of voter ID theft and all that garbage,” Hays said.”I haven’t heard any more out of those people yet. So many of these fringe groups, the radicals out there, once you take the wind out of their sails, they don’t have any more to say, and that’s a good thing.”
Meanwhile, the voting process is moving smoothly in Central Florida despite the massive flooding from Hurricane Ian last month.
DeSantis has received criticism for easing election rules in GOP-leaning southwest Florida counties devastated by Ian, including extending early voting hours, but not in Democratic-leaning Central Florida counties such as Orange.
But Cowles reiterated that all 20 early voting sites in the county are up and running and his office did not ask for any exceptions to voting rules.
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