Decline in active voter rolls hits Democrats harder than GOP in Polk County and Florida

It is hardly news to anyone that Florida’s population is surging.

After a stall during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sunshine State is again seeing a strong influx of residents from elsewhere. Florida’s population increased by 1.6% in 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

And Polk County ranked as Florida’s fastest-growing county in a study released last year.

Logic says, then, that voter rolls in Polk County and Florida must be swelling as well, right?

Wrong.

Polk County’s roster of active voters declined by more than 20,000 from the beginning of 2023 to the start of this year, according to Polk County Supervisor of Elections Office.

Florida saw nearly 1 million registered voters moved from active to inactive status from late 2022 to late 2023, the news site Florida Bulldog reported.

That shift reflects a law the Florida Legislature passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year, directing county election offices to a more aggressive approach in maintaining voter rolls. Under one provision of the wide-ranging law, registered voters become inactive if they have not voted in the past two general elections and do not respond within 30 days to an address-confirmation notice from their local election office.

The law revises a policy adopted in 2022, under which election offices sent two notices before making voters inactive. Prior to that, voters remained on active rolls even if they did not reply to address-confirmation mailers.

All of Polk County’s legislators voted for the new law (SB 7050) except for Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade, who did not vote.

The purging of active voters is not affecting the parties equally. Statewide, registered Democrats and voters with no party affiliation (NPA) accounted for 90% of the shifted voters, the Florida Bulldog reported.

The trend is similar in Polk County. Following the new state law, the elections office moved 23,452 voters listed as NPA or registered with minor parties to inactive status last year. For Democrats, the figure was 16,056, compared with 9,329 for Republicans.

Those removals from active rolls reflected 17.1% of NPA/other voters at the start of 2023, 11.2% of Democrats and 5.4% of Republicans.

Overall, the number of registered Republicans in Polk County rose by 370 last year, as new registrations offset the removals. The roster of registered Democrats dropped by 10,577, while the ranks of NPA/other voters shrank by 10,255.

Republicans now hold an advantage of more than 41,000 over Democrats in Polk County, where registered Democrats had been the majority until 2017. Republicans comprise 40.1% of Polk’s registered voters, compared with 30.6% for Democrats and 29.3% for NPA/others.

More Democrats go inactive

Statewide, 38.1% of registered voters were Republican, 32.9% Democrat and 29% NPA or other as of Nov. 30, according to the Florida Department of Elections.

Just because a voter is moved to inactive status does not mean the citizen is no longer eligible to vote. Inactive voters may contact their county election office to be restored to active status, or they may simply show up to vote in the next election, Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards said.

If the elections office receives a notice from the post office, the voter’s mail is returned or the office has some other indication that someone has moved, the office sends the voter a postcard. If it receives no response, the voter’s status is changed to inactive. If an inactive voter has no activity for two years, they are removed from the county’s rolls, Edwards said.

Is the shifting of many voters to inactive status having a disproportionate affect on Democrats and NPA/other voters in other counties? The Ledger contacted elections offices in four counties.

Republicans hold majorities of voters in two of them, Sarasota and Brevard, while Democrats dominate in the other two, Broward and Leon.

• In Brevard, 22,173 voters registered as NPA or with minor parties were moved to inactive status last year, according to the county’s election office. That change affected 16,904 registered Democrats and 16,479 Republicans.

Active registered Democrats in Brevard declined by 16,840 last year, while Republicans dropped by 9.537 and NPA/others by 17,074. Republicans now comprise 44.8% of Brevard’s registered voters, with Democrats at 27% and NPA/others at 27.5%.

• Sarasota County’s election office shifted 12,490 Republicans and 11.689 Democrats to inactive status last year. The figure was 15,867 for those registered as NPA/other.

Overall, the active roll declined by 13,233 for Democrats, 7,752 for Republicans and 13,670 for NPA/other voters.

The figures for newly inactive voters in Sarasota defy the trend, as Republicans hold a substantial edge in the county with 46% of active voters, compared with 27.3% for Democrats and 26.7% for NPA/others.

• In Broward County, 87,056 registered Democrats were moved to inactive status during 2023, according to the Supervisor of Elections Office. That was nearly triple the number of registered Republicans made inactive — 30,078. For NPA/other voters, the figure was 73,742.

Democrats dominate registrations in Broward, one of Florida’s remaining, solidly blue counties. But registered Democrats fell by 15.4% last year, reflecting 91,320 fewer voters. Republican registrations dropped by 22,395, or 8.4%, while those registered with other parties or no party declined by 57,872, or 14.7%.

• In Leon County, another Democratic stronghold, the same trend held true. The Supervisor of Elections Office reported moving more than three times as many Democrats as Republicans to inactive status — 5,504 to 1,814. Another 3,155 voters, registered with other parties or no party, became inactive under state law.

Democrats represent 50.5% of voters in Leon County, with Republicans at 27.4% and others at 22.1%

Low Democratic turnout in 2022

The general statewide trend toward more Democratic voters becoming inactive partly indicates the impact of the 2022 election. With DeSantis seeking a second term against Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican, the GOP experienced a red wave never before seen in Florida.

DeSantis trounced Crist by 19.4 percentage points. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio defeated Democratic challenger Val Demings by 16.4 points, and Republican candidates in other statewide races all won by at least 18 points.

DeSantis had defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum in the 2018 gubernatorial election by a mere 32,000 votes. The dramatic swing indicates that in a non-presidential election, many registered Democrats did not bother to vote.

Those who had not voted in the 2020 election were moved to inactive status under the new state law. Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, said the disproportionate removal of Democrats from active status seems a clear reflection of turnout in the 2022 election.

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“The most important triggering mechanism for all of this is if you don't vote in two successive (general) elections,” Jewett said. “And what it seems to me is that Democrats, and independents to some degree, or NPAs, were much less likely to turn out this past election.”

Jewett said that several research papers have confirmed that low participation by Democrats contributed to DeSantis’ landslide victory. While local races also have an impact on voter turnout, Jewett said research has established that races at the top of the ticket — those for president or governor — largely drive participation rates.

Jim Guth, until recently chair of the Polk County Republican Party, did not seem surprised by the trend in voter registrations.

“I think there's some disillusionment with both parties that’s going on nationwide,” Guth said. “And in particular, I think you'll see the Democrats becoming disillusioned with the policies that are being enacted. And I would endorse that disillusionment.”

In Polk County, Guth said Republican voters had much more reason than Democrats to turn out for the last election.

“In 2022, I can tell you that the field presented for people to vote on was stronger on the Republican side than it was on the Democratic side,” he said. “And so, we had several seats that were actually unopposed, as you probably are aware. And I think it has to do with, when you get down to it, it has to do with fundraising.”

Guth resigned about two months ago for health reasons. Al Goldstein, who served as interim Republican Party chair, said he thinks the party registration dynamics indicate a rejection of Democratic policies at the national level.

“I think Americans are realizing on all sides — regardless, independent, Republican or Democrat — are realizing the dire problems that we're facing here in the United States, inflation, the border, the wishy-washy leadership about who we're protecting or who we’re defending worldwide,” Goldstein said. “I think it's spurring people on to rethink what makes America different. And we're a freedom-loving, constitutional country that doesn't seem to be operating that way right now. And I think that's setting back a lot of people.”

Voting rates concern Republican

Though Republicans are benefiting at the moment, Goldstein said he isn’t celebrating the decline in active voters.

“I don't care what party, I'm concerned about turnout,” Goldstein said. “Because if we don't turn out to vote, someday, somebody's going to be in the office and say, ‘Well, you don't want to vote, so we'll just take it away from you.’ And we don't want to see that happen.”

Cesar Ramirez, chair of the Polk County Democratic Party, said he and others are working to bolster participation in future elections.

“Clearly, we have our eye on the ball, and we're focused on getting all those voters that were kicked off the roll back on, (with) emphasis on vote by mail,” Ramirez said. “But we, while we look at those numbers, we're very optimistic.”

Ramirez said that many voters don’t realize that they have been moved to inactive status. He said that Polk Democrats are working to reach voters in that category and encourage them to regain active status.

Ramirez pointed to recent city elections that, while nonpartisan, produced wins for three candidates the Democratic Party supported — Clifton Dollison in Winter Haven and Samuel Berrien and Jaret Williams in Fort Meade. He cited the potential for a state ballot measure on a constitutional amendment establishing abortion rights as a boost for Democratic turnout in this year’s general election, which will include a presidential contest.

“And we're hoping that those are the type of things that motivate our voters to come out, not only to make sure that they're registered and that their voter roll is active, but to actually come out and cast their votes,” Ramirez said. “So we're cautiously optimistic and strategically planning to take advantage of some of the good trends.”

Even after the Republican dominance of Florida’s elections in 2022, Jewett said he considers it too soon to declare definitively that Florida has shifted from its longtime “purple” designation — a state in which Democrats have a chance in statewide races — to the red (for Republican) category.

But Jewett said the trend is not encouraging for Democrats. Historically, he said, most voters who go into inactive status do not return to participation in elections. Meanwhile, he said, Democrats face another disadvantage in seeking to offset their registration deficits statewide and in many counties.

SB 7050, the law enacted last year, contains a provision making it harder for outside groups from gathering voter registrations and submitting them to county election offices. Such organizations as the League of Women Voters have traditionally engaged in such registration drives, and though that group is nonpartisan, its drives often target demographic groups that lean Democratic.

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Among the provisions, organizations must renew their registration with the Florida Division of Elections for each cycle, and non-citizens and those with certain felony convictions are barred from handling voter applications, with potential fines of $50,000 per violation.

Registration groups must submit applications within 10 days of completion, with potential penalties of up to $250,000 for late submissions.

The League of Women Voters filed a federal lawsuit over those provisions last May, one of three legal challenges to the new law. In the meantime, some outside groups have ceased or cut back on voter-registration campaigns.

“That's sort of the other side of the equation,” Jewett said. “Not only are Democrats losing voters who are already registered, but it's more difficult to replace them.”

Struggling to field candidates

Democrats face the risk of entering a negative feedback loop.

“For Democrats, that trend in registration doesn't look good,” Jewett said. “And it makes it more difficult to field quality candidates, it makes it more difficult to mobilize voters, which in turn, of course, makes it more difficult to elect Democrats. So yeah, definitely not great news for Democrats, but pretty good news for Republicans.”

In Polk County, Democrats failed to field candidates in four Florida House races. The prospects for this year’s election do not appear any better.

As of Tuesday, no Democrat had filed to run against U.S. Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Lakeland, in District 18. In the Florida House, six Republicans and no Democrats had entered the race for the open District 48, while two Republicans and no Democrats had filed to succeed Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade, in District 49.

No Democrat had entered the races for state attorney, public defender, tax collector, property appraiser, sheriff, clerk of court or supervisor of elections. (Edwards, a former Democrat, is seeking re-election as a no-party candidate against Bell, a Republican.)

Polk County Commissioner Bill Braswell, a Republican, faced no opponent as of Tuesday, while only Republicans had filed to run for two open seats.

“When you look at a district, and you see that it's overwhelmingly Democrat or overwhelmingly Republican, the opposite side has trouble fundraising, because nobody wants to donate to somebody that has a very small chance of winning, even if they've got a good platform,” Guth said. “And so, if you can't raise the money, you can't run an effective campaign. I don't like that as a fact, but it is reality. And that's kind of where we are.”

Jewett concurred with that perspective.

“When you look at the possible reasons why people decide to vote or not to vote, certainly, actually having candidates and running and having competitive elections typically increases turnout,” he said. “People feel like there's a reason to turn out. And the opposite is also true. If the parties don't field the candidates, then their supporters are less likely to turn out and vote because they feel like perhaps they don't have as much of a reason to do so.”

The candidate qualifying deadline is June 14 for most county and state elections.

No Democrat from Polk County has won election to a county or statewide office in more than a decade. But Ramirez said his party is determined to be viable.

“We're always on the hunt for candidates,” he said. “It’s a very interesting dynamic in finding folks. We have plenty of good Democrats that would make excellent candidates. The point is where they are in their life and in their career that they want to come out and run as candidates, and we're going to work our hardest to make sure that every seat is contested with good candidates. We feel that we are on the right side of issues, and we're hoping that we find candidates to ensure that our counterparts are not running uncontested.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

Correction

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that state Rep. Melony Bell, R-Fort Meade, did not vote on SB 7050 during the 2023 Legislative Session. Bell, who was away from Tallahassee during the vote, submitted a vote of "yes" after roll call. Her vote is officially logged in the Florida House record in the "Vote After Roll Call," just not with the main roll call log.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Decline in active voters hurts Democrats more than GOP in Polk, Fla.