• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. vote by mail>

Small but significant number of mail-in ballots uncounted in Florida

Bill Theobald
July 01, 2020
Florida mail voting

Poll workers count mail-in ballots during the March primary election in Tallahassee, Fl. More than 18,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the Florida primary, new research has found.

Mark Walheiser/Getty Images

More than 18,000 ballots were mailed in but not tabulated in Florida's presidential primary, researchers have found. And the envelopes returned by young, first-time and Black voters were the most likely not to get counted.

The number of uncounted absentee ballots is one component of an analysis of the March 17 primary published last week by the Healthy Elections Project, created by experts at Stanford and MIT.

While the number of uncounted mail ballots is a tiny fraction — 1.3 percent — of the total number of mail-in ballots in the primary, it nonetheless represents a significant number of voters in a state renowned for its razor-thin election results.


Researchers said the data they studied did not provide a breakdown of why the mail-in ballots were not counted. But they said the two most likely reasons were that the envelopes arrived after the deadline — when the polls closed on primary day — or there was some problem with the way the ballots were filled out. This could include everything from not signing the ballot to the signature not matching what is on file with election officials.

The GOP-majority Legislature last year changed the process of signature matching in ways that voting rights advocates want to see nationwide. It sets out a more rigorous standard than in the past for rejecting a mail-in ballot, requires election officials to notify voterd if their envelopes have been rejected because of a perceived signature mismatch, and gives voters until two days after the election to persuade officials that their handwriting was legitimate.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The Healthy Elections Project analysis also found that voters 18 to 29 were almost three times as likely to have their mail-in ballots not counted (3.6 percent compared to 1.3 percent overall).

First-time voters were almost twice as likely to have their mail-in ballots not counted, while 2.3 percent of Black voters' mail-in ballots were not counted.

Experts say the results call for a public education effort to explain to people how to properly vote by mail.

Overall, the share of votes cast by mail increased dramatically for the presidential contest — to 46 percent, up from 29 percent four years ago — despite the fact that the coronavirus pandemic was still in its early stages when voters had to decide whether to vote absentee or in person.

Notably, the percentage of Republicans voting absentee outstripped Democrats, 55 percent to 40 percent — a sign that plenty of GOP voters in the third-most populous state disagree with President Trump's oft-stated view that mail-in voting should be sharply restricted because it promotes election fraud.

The president was one of those mail-in voters in March, however, even though he had been in his newly adopted hometown of Palm Beach during the period for in-person early voting in a primary. (He had to amend his initial registration application in September, because he originally listed his "legal residence" as 1600 Pennsyvania Avenue in Washington — the White House address — and Florida law requires voters to be legal residents of the state.

There's no way the uncounted ballots were dispositive. Trump was essentially unopposed and Joe Biden cruised to victory with 62 percent of the vote. But there are plenty of hard-fought campaigns underway for congressional, legislative, judicial and local office nominations ahead of the state primary in seven weeks.

And, of course, the state's 29 electoral votes will be intensely contested in November. Trump carried the state last time by just over 100,000 votes, or 1.2 percentage points, out of a 9.5 million ballots cast. President Barack Obama won the state by less than 1 point in 2012.

From Your Site Articles
  • Florida settles lawsuit on expanded voting - The Fulcrum ›
  • 500,000 ballots already rejected in 2020 elections - The Fulcrum ›
  • Vote Smarter 2020: Options for returning your mail-in ballot - The Fulcrum ›
vote by mail

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Political brain fog

Lawrence Goldstone
7h

Sounding the alarm over TDS

Lynn Schmidt
7h

Podcast: Redefining conservatism for millennials

Our Staff
7h

Taking flight into difficult but meaningful conversations

Debilyn Molineaux
22 March

The power of libraries to connect communities

Annie Caplan
Cristy Moran
22 March

Podcast: Break out of your bubble: Talk to a stranger

Our Staff
22 March
Videos

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Our Staff

Video: We asked conservatives at CPAC what woke means

Our Staff

Video: DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda

Our Staff

Video: A conversation with Tiahna Pantovich

Our Staff

Video: What would happen if Trump was a third-party candidate in 2024?

Our Staff

Video: How the Federal Reserve is the shadow branch of the government

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Redefining conservatism for millennials

Our Staff
7h

Podcast: Break out of your bubble: Talk to a stranger

Our Staff
22 March

Podcast: Inequitable ability: Electoral and civic challenges faced by those with disabilities

Our Staff
21 March

Podcast: A tricky dance

Our Staff
14 March
Recommended
Political brain fog

Political brain fog

Big Picture
Sounding the alarm over TDS

Sounding the alarm over TDS

Threats to democracy
Podcast: Redefining conservatism for millennials

Podcast: Redefining conservatism for millennials

Podcasts
Taking flight into difficult but meaningful conversations

Taking flight into difficult but meaningful conversations

Big Picture
The power of libraries to connect communities

The power of libraries to connect communities

Big Picture
Podcast: Break out of your bubble: Talk to a stranger

Podcast: Break out of your bubble: Talk to a stranger

Podcasts