Judge fears 25,000 voters won’t be eligible for election, demands explanation

A federal judge is demanding an explanation from state officials at a Friday hearing about a backlog in the number of newly-registered voters who haven’t been verified so they can vote in Florida’s election.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker has been tracking the number of unverified applicants, which on Thursday was nearly 25,000 out of 125,000 who registered during a week-long extension the judge granted after Hurricane Matthew earlier this month.

“It appears that the amount of voters being processed each day has slowed dramatically,” Walker wrote in an order late Thursday. “As of now, almost 25,000 voters may or may not have their vote counted in the 2016 general election.”

The judge ordered Gov. Rick Scott’s top elections official, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, to have his elections division director, Maria Matthews, available to face questions.

One of five Florida voters has already voted in the Nov. 8 presidential election. Some trends favor Hillary Clinton while others look good for Donald Trump.

Nearly 2.5 million had cast ballots by Thursday, according to the Division of Elections.

Republicans and Democrats equally account for 41 percent of votes cast so far with no-party and minor-party voters making up the remaining 18 percent.

More Republicans than Democrats have voted, but the GOP’s turnout advantage is one-half of one percentage point — a Florida election, all right.

The Republican advantage in mail ballot returns is much smaller than in previous cycles, and Democrats lead in early voting.

About two-thirds of all votes cast so far in Florida have been by mail and the other third cast at early voting sites.

Seventeen more counties will begin early voting on Saturday, including Pasco, the state’s 12th largest in voter registration with about 333,000 voters.

More Democrats than Republicans have received mail ballots, but a higher share of Republicans have returned them (53 percent) than have Democrats (49 percent).

Through Wednesday, more people in Miami-Dade have voted than anywhere else: about 272,000 or 20.2 percent of the county electorate, based on September registration numbers.

If that pace continues, Miami-Dade turnout would match or exceed the state as a whole.

That would be an anomaly and a major advantage for Clinton and the Democrats because Miami-Dade consistently votes Democratic in statewide elections.

But just up the road, a possible cause for concern for Democrats is that turnout in overwhelmingly Democratic Broward County is sluggish, at 16.5 percent as of Thursday morning.

In the last presidential election in 2012, statewide turnout was 71.5 percent, but the three South Florida counties trailed that rate from 2 to 5 percentage points.

Those percentages will keep growing daily and are subject to fluctuations in the days ahead as mail ballots pour in and as early voting hits a peak with “Souls to the Polls” on the 14th and final day, Sunday, Nov. 6.

One positive sign for Trump is that voters in three counties on the state’s deep red southwest coast — Collier, Lee and Charlotte — are turning out in droves. As of Thursday, Lee County reported a turnout of 33 percent, and the other two weren’t far behind.

Democrats are concentrating on the influx of new Hispanic voters, many of them Democratic-leaning from Puerto Rico, while Republicans are focusing on their most loyal voters.

A wild card in Florida is the growing pool of voters with no party affiliation. They make up 24 percent of the total voter pool but so far account for 16 percent of early voters.

This story was originally published October 27, 2016 at 8:15 AM with the headline "Judge fears 25,000 voters won’t be eligible for election, demands explanation."