A.G. Gancarski
Operating in his capacity as president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, Republican Jerry Holland issued a “special guest editorial” this week on FSASE letterhead, urging the passage of online voter registration (via House Bill 7143 and Senate Bill 228) in Florida.
“It is important to us because current voter registration is handled entirely by hand, on paper forms, and manually entered into our statewide database. This method is much more costly and prone to error than a modern online system,” Holland observes.
Describing how an incomplete hard copy voter application must be processed and returned to the applicant, Holland says it costs SOE offices “processing time and postage for each occurrence.” Conversely, an online application would have its own internal mechanism, requiring completion of all fields before submission.
“The process our office is mandated to walk through involves multiple rounds of mail before we can determine a person may no longer reside at a particular residence,” Holland writes. “With online registration we likely would see many more people updating their voter information through the convenience of online services, just as they do with other information like bank accounts and bills after a move.”
The goal of the SOEs: to get the system implemented after the 2016 cycle, so as not to disrupt the presidential election cycle.
The system would be coordinated with “the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles” to verify identity, which would, according to Holland, be another stopgap against fraud and error, since “the voter applicants linked to the DHSMV system have already proven their citizenship and identity, something that is not required ahead of time with the current processing of paper voter registration applications.
“Currently, paper forms are accepted on the basis of applicants swearing to an oath as they check boxes attesting to their eligibility. The paper forms are, in essence, based on an ‘honor system’ and applicants are added to the rolls until a voter maintenance window determines they might have questionable eligibility.”
Arguing that online voter registration confers no benefit to either party, based on implementation in more than 20 states, and that there are a host of benefits, it is clear the outgoing Duval SOE wants to make this happen. Will Tallahassee listen, though?
