Florida Democrats dispute reporting of record registered voter gap

Image via Phillip Jerez, LinkedIn

If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

That old axiom usually applies to campaigns trying to escape from bad news cycles. It also applies to the Florida Democratic Party, which is blaming everyone but itself for rancid registration numbers that show the Republican Party of Florida with a million more voters than its opposition.

“Florida Republicans are quick to take victory laps on their manufactured voter registration lead — but what Republicans aren’t telling you is that this voter registration total excludes 886,066 registered Democratic voters,” reads a memo to “interested parties” from Executive Director Philip Jerez.

Jerez’s screed begins with a salvo against a public broadcasting station, condemning “misleading results first reported by WUFT Fresh Take Florida” as “a product of Republican voter suppression tactics.”

“Over the past few years, Republicans have passed new elections laws, two specifically that changed ‘list maintenance’ processes,” Jerez asserted. “As a result, almost one million Democratic voters have been labeled ‘inactive voters’ and wiped from the total reported to the public — the same margin Republicans claim victory on.”

Of course, Republicans can’t take all the blame for Democratic underperformance.

Though Jerez buries the lede, he ultimately admits that the disastrous 2022 cycle laid the foundation for Democratic attrition from voter rolls.

“Following the 2022 elections, which saw historically low turnout for Florida Democrats — intentional changes in election laws targeting voters who sat out 2022 caused a dramatic rise in the number of inactive voters in the state,” Jerez said.

“As a result, Democrats are now disproportionately affected by these new laws (S.B. 524 and S.B. 7050) and marked as inactive at substantially higher rates — enabling Republicans to benefit from these voter suppression tactics and inflate their perceived voter registration lead.”

In other words, Democrats couldn’t get their voters to the polls, setting the stage for the new laws to cut into their performance.

Ultimately, Jerez suggested these voters who have been purged may show up in November anyway.

“While inactive voters are not counted in public voter registration totals, they are still eligible to vote on Election Day,” he added.

“And in 2024, we are already seeing a massive momentum shift. Since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race, the Florida Democratic Party has seen a major boost in enthusiasm in Florida, recording the highest increase of new volunteers in the country with more than 20,000 Floridians signed up to fight back against Donald Trump, JD Vance and the extreme Republican Party.”