Jesse Scheckner
House lawmakers just passed a bill to prevent Florida motorists from involuntarily having their political party affiliation switched while renewing their driver’s licenses.
The bill (HB 135) cleared the chamber floor with unanimous support. If approved in the Senate, it will create new safeguards that the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) must abide by to ensure voters can only switch or leave a political party on purpose.
Highland Beach Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, who sponsored the measure with Delray Beach Rep. Mike Caruso, a fellow Republican, said DHSMV “glitches” may have accidentally deregistered hundreds of thousands of Florida voters from their chosen party.
The problem had to do with DHSMV software that gave motorists seeking new or updated licenses to also update their voter registration. If they didn’t re-select their existing party, the system switched them to no-party affiliation (NPA).
An untold number of voters remained unaware of the party switch until they tried casting ballots in a Primary Election and were barred from doing so, according to Gossett-Seidman, who said the issue went uncorrected for the past seven to eight years.
“The glitches have been fixed,” Gossett-Seidman said before the House floor vote Monday. But the since-corrected error nevertheless highlighted a need for better guardrails moving forward.
HB 135 and its identical Senate analog (SB 1256) by Fort Myers Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin would, if approved:
— Prohibit DHSMV from using voter registration applications to change an applicant’s political party without their written consent.
— Require a separate, original signature and printed receipt confirming a person’s consent to changing parties.
— Require DHSMV to document and forward to the Department of State records of party affiliation changes.
— Prohibit DHSMV clerks from encouraging party changes unless the customer has a clear disability and requests assistance.
— Require driver’s license examiners who provide voter registration services to ask whether an applicant is registered to vote. If the person is not registered or doesn’t know the status of their registration, the examiner must ask whether the person wishes to register to vote and, if the person is registered, whether they want to update their voter registration card. If the person chooses not to disclose that information, the DHSMV employee must make an official note of that decision and forward it to the Department of State.
“This bill’s going to … clean up what’s been going on,” Caruso said, “and allow for our voter rolls to accurately reflect what the voters intended.”
Gossett-Seidman, a freshman lawmaker, said she learned of the DHSMV glitch issue on the campaign trail. “Three or four dozen people” told her they were exasperated at being unwillingly booted from their political party and, consequently, the Primary process.
So, she took the issue up with House Speaker Paul Renner, DHSMV Director Dave Kerner and Secretary of State Cord Byrd. All gave her “full support” and a “hard look” at fixing the problem, she said.
She added, “I give them full credit.”
HB 135 will now go to the Senate, where SB 1256 awaits a full and final floor vote. The legislation would go into effect upon becoming law.
2 comments
Dont Say FLA
March 4, 2024 at 2:48 pm
Are electoral options available on the public transit card vending machines too?
No. Why not?
Why do we make things convenient for the auto-centric electorate but not for who rides the bus, bicycles, walks, scoots, etc?
Voting options
March 5, 2024 at 7:55 am
Providing electoral options in certain places with limited audiences creates bias in the voter pool. Voting options should be available only in the sorts of places ALL eligible voters go, or exclusively in electoral centers where people go for no reason but to make electoral choices.
Young folk these days don’t run out and get their driving licenses when they’re 16 anymore. They haven’t done that for decades.
Many young folk still don’t get their DL at 18 or 21 or any age. They smartly do not want to incur the huge expense and risk of owngin and operating a private motor vehicle.
Kids these days don’t fall for the “freedom” and “so sexy” lines about debt prison and insurance & tires & brakes & (usually) gasoline payment prisons. They are more fiscally responsible than to fall for lines about massive debt granting freedom and making them more attractive for potential mates. Debts are prisons. Mates are prisons. They are not freedoms. They’re the opposite of freedom.
Making electoral administration available at the DMV creates a bias in the voting population towards folks who choose a life that’s directly involved with motor vehicles, effectively suppressing votes for any and all alternatives to creates lives in Florida that are independent from motor vehicles. (For example can you even walk out of your own neighborhood? OR is it so far you either drive or die of heat stroke before you get to the closest grocery store / school / library / etc. Probably not)
Traffic will never improve as long as drivers are advantaged in voting. That’s because drivers accept traffic. They’re used to it. For them, traffic is just how things are.$200+/month for insurance is just how things are. $450+/month for a car payments is just how things are. Add another few hundreds per month for maintenance & operating costs. Drivers accept arbitrarily fatalities when from going from point A to point B. To them that’s just the price of “Freedom.” Sometimes people don’t make it to wherever they were going. Sometimes they, instead, die.
To others, cars are little, antisocial jail cells. People die in jail. Avoid.
OTOH some folks just don’t have the money for cars. They might want a car, but they don’t have the dinero, or maybe they can’t get a license due to their previous driving when they did have a license.
Those folks are also disenfranchised by making electoral options more convenient for the driving population.
And who avoids cars by choice or not by choice? Democrats. Ergo, GOP run state Florida offers voting this and voting that up at the DMV.
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