‘Voter suppression has become a norm.’ South Florida activists detail primary problems.
A group of activists across Florida admonished county-level election supervisors on Friday for failing to inform voters of polling place location changes and providing inaccessible drop boxes for vote-by-mail ballots, warning that hitches like those will become worse in November if they go unaddressed.
During a Friday press conference organized by Faith in Florida, an advocacy organization that seeks to end racial inequality, representatives from five different groups detailed experiences of voters being turned away from the polls during Tuesday’s primary, primarily in majority-Black precincts in Broward County. One organization said some voters couldn’t cast ballots at all because they ran out of time after initially being turned away.
“What we witnessed on primary Election Day this past Tuesday was at best gross negligence by the supervisors of elections office and and at worst a concerted suppression effort,” said Corryn G. Freeman, the Florida for All Education Fund’s state director, a coalition of progressive social justice organizations in Florida.
Carolyn Thompson, a voter protection advocate with the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization, said her organization saw voters being turned away at four voting locations in Broward County: the Tamarac library, the Miramar library, the Lauderhill Mall and the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale. Thompson said her organization had to redirect “numerous people” at the four sites and that some were unable to cast a ballot before the polls closed.
“What we saw was countless people showed up to vote in person to find that their polling site had been closed, consolidated or moved,” Thompson said. “We reached out to the supervisors of elections to dispatch poll workers to redirect voters and they refused to do so.”
The Tamarac precinct was one of three — including Lighthouse Point and Coconut Creek — that ran out of ballots on Tuesday afternoon and instructed voters to return later, according to Steve Vancore, a spokesman for Broward Supervisor of Elections Peter Antonacci.
Vancore said that poll workers at those precincts should have instructed voters to use an electronic kiosk called “ExpressVote” after running out of paper ballots. But poll workers at those three precincts didn’t know how to use the kiosk, he said. More paper ballots were delivered to the precincts on Tuesday afternoon, he said.
In other cases, activists reported confusion over polling locations, describing voters bouncing from location to location and seeking drop boxes for their vote-by-mail ballots, only to find their voting precinct had been combined with another, closed due to COVID-19 or was simply an early voting site that was never meant to be open on Election Day at all.
Activists said they fielded dozens of calls from people who showed up at the wrong location. And in Florida, elections are often decided by small margins, so a couple of hundred confused voters could change results.
“I have no idea why it is so bad in Broward County, but hundreds of people show up at their early voting sites ... We step into the gap and make sure we are calling and letting folks know where to go,” said Roxey Nelson, a longtime grassroots organizer in Florida and vice president of the SEIU 1199, which represents more than 25,000 healthcare workers in Florida. “No one wants to wake up the day after the election and think that people didn’t get the information they needed ... At the end of the day, we have to be the guardians of the vote.”
Vancore said Friday that he has had extended conversations with community activists and voters on how to smooth over election bumps in the 77 days between the primary and general election on Nov. 3.
Vancore said the Supervisor of Elections’ office is changing the algorithm so that each precinct gets 30% more ballots than needed instead of the usual 15% buffer. Poll workers will be retrained to call the supervisor’s office if ballots run low, instead of waiting.
COVID-19 has also complicated polling locations, with some business owners or local governments no longer choosing to host the sites.
The number of precincts dropped from about 420 to around 385 countywide, Vancore said, and each voter got a postcard informing them of their new location. There was also a sign at each location, he said, but sometimes precincts closed too late to give voters enough notice.
“If you are at the Hollywood Lutheran Church and the minister calls you and says, ‘We changed our mind,’ all we can do is try and find a new location,” Vancore said.
No reported issues in Miami-Dade
Christina White, Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, said her office received no reports of voters being turned away or unable to drop off vote-by-mail ballots.
White said the county’s biggest takeaway from Tuesday’s primary was the popularity of early voting during the pandemic, though she said the county was able to handle the increased demand “quite easily.”
“The turnout in early voting was something that was unexpected. That was at a historical high for a primary,” White said. “But it’s really nothing compared to November. There will be more in-person voting. We’re going to make sure our poll workers have ample PPE and just be ready for that in-person surge.”
White said the county’s drive-up drop boxes for mail ballots were a success and that the county will have 33 early voting sites for the November election, compared with 23 for the primary.
White encouraged voters to cast a ballot early, either by mail or at an early voting site, because it gives the county time to rectify any issues. Anyone can vote at any early voting site. On Election Day, voters must cast ballots at their assigned polling location.
“My message for November is going to be ‘Don’t wait,’” White said. “If you’re requesting a mail ballot, request it and mail it as soon as possible. If you forget to sign it or if your signature doesn’t match, you’ll have time to correct it. In terms of in-person voting, vote early.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 4:51 PM.