Florida: New law sets study of online voting for overseas military | Palm Beach Post

Florida Gov. Rick Scott finished off his duties from the 2016 legislative session on Friday by vetoing perhaps the most controversial bill of the year — the proposed overhaul of the state’s alimony and child-custody laws — and signing two others bills. With those moves, the Republican governor finished acting on all 272 bills — including the state budget — approved by the Legislature this year. He signed all but three. One of the last two signed by Scott could lead to an online voting system for overseas military personnel from Florida, and the other is expected to help people get mental-health or substance-abuse treatment.

Florida: Dead cat at heart of Florida election controversy | Politico

Gracey Duncan seemed to be the type of Floridian a nonprofit voter-registration group wanted to get on the rolls to start participating in elections. But two problems stood in the way: Gracey is a cat. And she’s dead. “Why is my (dead)cat getting #voterregistration apps? This is #2,” Gracey’s confused former owner, Julie Duncan, asked her local election supervisor via Twitter. The easy answer to Duncan’s question is that a database mix-up or mismatch led the nonprofit Voter Participation Center to think “Gracey Duncan” was the type of person — a minority or single woman — the liberal-leaning group wants to register ahead of the presidential election.

Florida: New law will boost supervisor of elections pay | St. Augustine Record

A new law will increase salaries of supervisors of elections statewide. But the St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes said she’s not sure whether she will take the increase, though she said she supports her fellow supervisors. The legislation, signed Wednesday by Gov. Rick Scott, is expected to raise supervisors’ salaries by a per-county average of $18,450, according to a report by the News Service of Florida. That’s more than $1 million statewide. The law, set to take effect Oct. 1, would change numbers used for salary calculation for supervisors of elections to match those currently used for property appraiser, tax collector and clerk of courts, according to the bill and Florida statutes. The formula uses county population to determine salaries.

Florida: Election officials want fixes for ‘historically flawed’ voting system | Tampa Bay Times

Another Florida election is over, but another Florida election controversy is just beginning. In the aftermath of the passionate outpouring of support for Donald Trump, some voters complained that when they went to the polls on March 15, they were given ballots without Trump’s name. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that hundreds of Palm Beach County voters received ballots for unaffiliated no-party or “NPA” voters, which means those voters could not vote for president in either party because Florida is a “closed primary” state. Palm Beach County Commissioner Steven Abrams identified about 2,000 people who updated their drivers’ license information at a local tax collector’s office did not realize that they were required to again choose their political party affiliation. Voters who don’t check that box are automatically classified as NPA voters — and the problem wasn’t discovered until those voters showed up to vote.

Florida: Five Questions for Ion Sancho | Sunshine State News

Ion Sancho has long been one of the most-outspoken elections officials in Florida. But after overseeing this fall’s voting in Leon County, he will step down after nearly three decades as an elections supervisor. A familiar figure to those who have followed Florida’s frequent election controversies, Sancho often was quoted in The New York Times, Washington Post and other media outlets. He generally argued that elections officials hadn’t gone far enough in preserving the sanctity of the vote, and he sometimes sparred with state elections officials. He is perhaps best known for challenging the security of certain voting machines, for which some vendors refused to sell their machines to him. Sancho’s zeal for accurate voting springs from his own candidacy in a botched election, a 1986 race for the Leon County Commission in which thousands of people were unable to cast ballots. Two years later, Sancho ran for supervisor of elections and won. Retiring after seven terms, he plans to write a book on the 2000 election.

Florida: U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown fights Congressional redistricting in court | Miami Herald

The legal fight over Florida’s drawing of its 27 Congressional districts is not quite over yet. An attorney for U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, argued in federal court Friday that the districts that the Florida Supreme Court ordered the state to enact late last year violate the federal Voting Rights Act. William Sheppard said the state is diluting the voting power of minority communities that were previously in Brown’s Congressional district by allowing the maps to go into effect in the November elections. Sheppard is asking the court for an injunction to stop the 2016 elections for Congress with the newly redrawn 5th Congressional district, which runs from Jacksonville west to Tallahassee. Sheppard wants the court to continue to allow Brown to run in the current 5th Congressional District. That district currently runs from Jacksonville and meanders 140 miles south to Orlando.

Florida: Federal judge rules state prison gerrymandering unconstitutional | South Florida Times

A federal judge ruled Monday that prisoners can’t be counted for population or in drawing up boundaries of voting districts in Florida, a decision that could have repercussions statewide. The decision was based on the drawing of district maps for county commission and school board seats in Jefferson County, located in northwest Florida. According to the Florida American Civil Liberties Union, the decision by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker marks the first time a federal court has issued such an opinion on “prison-based gerrymandering.” The ACLU and several Jefferson County residents filed the lawsuit after the county – which had a non-prison population of 13,604 in the 2010 census – counted 1,157 Jefferson Correctional Institute inmates in one district.

Florida: Court strikes down fee request in redistricting case | Florida Politics

An appeals court in Tallahassee has upheld a trial judge’s denial of attorney fees to the plaintiffs who won a congressional redistricting case. A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal agreed with Circuit Judge Terry Lewis that the League of Women Voters of Florida, Common Cause and others “waived their right” to get their legal fees reimbursed for the trial court portion of the case. A separate request for appellate attorney fees still is pending before the Florida Supreme Court, according to the 17-page decision. Plaintiffs’ attorneys include lead counsel David King of the King, Blackwell, Zehnder & Wermuth firm of Orlando; Tallahassee’s Mark Herron of Messer Caparello; as well as The Mills Firm in Tallahassee; Perkins Coie of Washington, D.C.; and Gelber Schachter & Greenberg of Miami. The total tab still hasn’t been tallied, but is likely in the millions of dollars. The fight was over competing legal doctrines over who pays whom after litigation. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued the state should pay their tab under the “private attorney general doctrine,” which isn’t law in Florida.

Florida: Reports of voting problems surface in Florida primary | CBS

As voters in the key primary state of Florida head to the polls Tuesday, reports of voting problems in some towns and counties have begun to surface. In Apopka, Fla., outside of Orlando, voters reported being turned away at two polling places because they ran out of Republican ballots. And later Tuesday, WKMG News 6 reporter Amanda Castro tweeted that the same polling places had also run out of Democratic ballots, with Democratic voters being turned away as well. Other polling places in the area faced technical glitches Tuesday, per WKMG, causing a switch to paper ballots. But no voters were turned away, local officials said.

Florida: No evidence for Trump claims of ‘dishonest’ voting, Florida officials say | Politico

Donald Trump claimed Saturday that he’s “asking law enforcement to check for dishonest early voting in Florida,” but neither the state’s law enforcement agency nor elections officials have received any complaints or reports of voting irregularities. Without any supporting evidence, Trump leveled his claim in two Twitter posts, suggesting the alleged activity was being done to help Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who might be closing the gap with the frontrunner in the final days of the campaign. Trump’s allegation, retweeted thousands of times, was issued on the last day of mandatory statewide in-person early voting, amid heavy turnout in urban counties where, polling indicates, Rubio is hoping to do well — especially in his home county of Miami-Dade, where 90,000 of the 1 million early and absentee ballots in Florida have been cast as of Saturday. Trump did not explain where the alleged fraud is happening and his campaign did not respond to an email for further explanation.

Florida: Voters’ mistakes mean some won’t have their vote-by-mail ballots counted | Sun Sentinel

Florida voters who cast their ballots by mail are making mistakes — which may mean their choices in the March 15 presidential primary won’t count. The numbers are small. Of the 580,000 Florida ballots processed as of Friday, about 8,000 weren’t accepted. Polls currently show blowouts in the Democratic and Republican primaries, but if the contests tighten, those uncounted votes could be significant. Statewide, about 99 percent of mail ballots returned as of Friday have been accepted, said Daniel Smith, the University of Florida political scientist who crunched the numbers.

Florida: Some absentee voters ask for re-dos on ballots after Bush drops out | WFTV

Although former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has dropped out from the presidential race, his name remains on Florida’s primary ballot. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots have been casted already in Florida, some with Bush’s name on them. Supervisors of elections have received calls from voters, asking if they can recast their vote now that Bush has suspended his campaign. “Every single year, we get these calls, and every single year, it’s no surprise,” Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel said. Ertel said the answer is always the same: No.

Florida: Thousands of voters switching to two major parties for primary | Tampa Bay Times

Maybe they want to vote for Donald Trump. Maybe they want to vote for Bernie Sanders. This much is for sure: They want to vote. Tens of thousands of voters with no party affiliation are rushing to beat Tuesday’s voter registration deadline so they can cast ballots in Florida’s presidential preference primary. County elections supervisors see a surge of NPA voters who are becoming overnight Republicans or Democrats. The League of Women Voters of Florida sees it as a hopeful sign of growing interest in the Florida primary. “We’re pleased that they’re doing this,” League President Pamela Goodman of Palm Beach told the Times/Herald Tuesday. “We want voters to do everything they can to be enfranchised to vote.”

Florida: Congressman pushes for Florida to join national voter registration database | Sun Sentinel

U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch is calling on Florida election officials to participate in a national database aimed at preventing voter fraud — amid reports that more than two dozen people possibly voted twice in the 2014 general election. The West Boca Democrat penned a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner on Tuesday, urging him to sign up for the Electronic Registration Information Center, a database used by 15 states and the District of Columbia. Deutch says the system known as ERIC would improve the accuracy of voter rolls by allowing Florida to compare its list of voters with other states’ at a minimal cost of $50,000.

Florida: Lawmaker Looks To Ensure Provisional Ballots Are Counted | WFSU

During a presidential election in Florida, thousands of provisional ballots are left uncounted. In some cases, that’s because voters forgot to sign them. And Sen. Audrey Gibson (D-Jacksonville) has a bill to do something about that. “It’s a very simple bill it just allows a voter who casts a ballot, but fails to sign his or her name to be able to cure that deficiency just like a voter can cure that deficiency on a vote by mail ballot,” Gibson says. A vote by mail ballot, or absentee ballot allows someone to request that a ballot be mailed to their home then they mail it back or drop it off at the supervisor of elections office. And sometimes voters make mistakes when filling out those ballots –like forgetting to sign them. But Gibson says there’s a plan in place to address that. And she wants that same plan to apply to provisional ballots—or a ballot that’s voted in person at a polling location, often when there are questions about a voter’s eligibility.

Florida: Secretary of state appeals Brown redistricting case | News Service of Florida

In another twist in Florida’s redistricting legal saga, Secretary of State Ken Detzner will ask a federal appeals court to dismiss him from a lawsuit filed by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown that challenges her redrawn district. Detzner’s attorney filed a notice last week that said the secretary of state is appealing a district-court ruling that kept him as a defendant in Brown’s lawsuit, which argues that a new redistricting plan violates the federal Voting Rights Act. The secretary of state, Florida’s chief elections officer, has contended for months that he is legally shielded from being a defendant in the case. A document filed in September, for example, said Detzner, “as a matter of law, is not responsible for congressional redistricting — that is uniquely a legislative function.” But a three-judge panel handling Brown’s case in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee rejected Detzner’s argument that he should be dismissed from the case.

Florida: Lee elections website hacking involves elections supervisor candidate | News-Press

State law enforcement officials served a search warrant Monday morning in the investigation of two men accused of hacking the Lee County supervisor of elections website. “There was an attempted hacking of the website, but this is an ongoing investigation,” said Vicki Collins, spokeswoman for the Lee County Supervisor of Elections. “The info they accessed was an old server with no (useful) information on it … Nobody is compromised.” Dan Sinclair is running for supervisor position against the incumbent Supervisor of Elections Sharon Harrington. He appeared in a video of the hacking posted to YouTube with David Levin, CEO of Vanguard Cybersecurity, walking through how Levin hacked into the Lee elections website a couple of weeks ago.

Florida: Secret-voter data bill, on shaky ground, is tabled a second time | Tampa Bay Times

Facing likely defeat, a Republican senator tabled his own bill Tuesday to make most public information on Florida voters secret. It was the second time that Sen. Thad Altman’s bill was pulled from consideration before a vote in the Senate Ethics & Elections Committee. Altman’s bill (SB 702), a priority of county election supervisors, would make all 12 million Florida voters’ home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses secret. The information has been public for decades, but supervisors say that because of the Internet, voters are shocked to find that the data is all over the web, making them potential targets of identity theft. The voter data is also used by Tom Alciere, a former New Hampshire legislator, who has for-profit websites that display states’ voter databases.

Florida: Hacking into Supervisors of Elections Office | Fox 4

Is the Supervisor of Elections computer system vulnerable to hackers? Dan Sinclair, who is running against Sharon Harrington, says it is. In a FOX 4 exclusive, Sinclair and his team show how they were able to infiltrate one of the Supervisor of Elections servers. Using a structured query languange.injection, Sinclair and David Levin were able to gain immediate access to a server. From there, they collected the passwords for everyone that works in the Supervisor of Elections office for Lee County.

Florida: Legislature won’t appeal redistricting ruling | Miami Herald

The Florida Legislature is giving up the fight and will not contest a court ruling that redraws all of the state’s 40 state senate districts for the 2016 election cycle. Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said he told Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, on Wednesday that the Legislature should let court-ordered maps go into effect, even though he says there were legal issues that were open to appeal. “My recommendation is for us not to appeal, and the Senate president has agreed,” Galvano said. The decision means that the state’s new map will become official on Feb. 8, when the clock runs out on the appeals process. It is the first time lawmakers have refrained from challenging a lower court ruling after four years of legal battles that have cost Florida taxpayers more than $11 million.

Florida: Casting ballots twice is not a big problem, voting advocates say, but some want action | Sun Sentinel

A snowbird casts two votes for president — one in Florida and another in his or her home state up North. It’s possible, and election supervisors are looking into reports of it happening in Palm Beach and Broward counties in the 2014 general election. But such double voting represents a minuscule number of the ballots cast in a federal election, voting-rights advocates say, and trying to stop what appears to be an inconsequential problem could result in eligible voters being disenfranchised. The problem isn’t people voting twice. It is people not voting at all, said Pamela Goodman, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida. “We should be focusing on enfranchising more voters and making it easier for people to vote,” she said.

Florida: The next redistricting fight: Who pays the attorneys? | Florida Politics

The Florida Legislature is continuing to oppose an effort by the plaintiffs’ attorneys to get their fees paid by state government now that the congressional redistricting case has been closed. Lawyers for House and Senate filed more legal authority with the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday to support their position that the opposing lawyers are “not entitled to an award of attorney’s fees.” Last month, the court gave its final OK to a redrawn version of the state’s 27 congressional districts, three years after a lawsuit alleged they were unconstitutional. The court eventually agreed and ordered a do-over of the map.

Florida: Group challenges inclusion of prisoners in voting districts | Associated Press

A federal judge heard arguments Wednesday in a case that could affect whether prisoners are counted in drawing voting districts in Florida, an issue that affects voting power particularly in rural areas of the state. The American Civil Liberties Union and several Jefferson County residents charge the county used “prison-based gerrymandering” in drawing its five county commission and school board districts, each with about 2,950 residents. The county, with a non-prison population of 13,604 in the 2010 census, counted 1,157 Jefferson Correctional Institute inmates in one district, where they’re more than a third of the population. That gave the eligible voters in the district almost twice the voting power of others in the county, the ACLU says. County residents involved in the lawsuit say it also cut minority voting power.

Florida: State embraces online voter signup, but fraud concerns linger | Tampa Bay Times

At the dawn of what promises to be a busy and potentially volatile election year in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration reports good progress in implementing a new system of online voter registration by 2017. The report raises familiar concerns that electronic voter registration could increase the possibility of fraud or identity theft and says the state will require “adequate and enhanced security protocols.” The Legislature last spring passed a bill allowing OVR by October of 2017, appropriated $1.8 million for the first stage, and ordered the Division of Elections to produce a progress report by Jan. 1. The 16-page report, sent to House and Senate leaders on New Year’s Eve, promises “timely and successful implementation” of the system by working in conjunction with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and all 67 county election supervisors.

Florida: How other states have modernized elections offers lessons for Florida | Miami Herald

This November in Austin, Texas, voters will pick a president during their regular trip to the grocery store. Maine residents who have never voted will register on Election Day. Every Colorado voter will get a ballot in the mail that they can mail or drop off anytime before the polls close. And some Alaskans will simply mark their ballots online. More and more, waiting in line at a neighborhood school or church to vote on a Tuesday in November is becoming archaic. Around the country, states are changing their laws accordingly, hoping to make casting a ballot as convenient as possible. And then there’s Florida, a state that has shunned same-day voter registration and vote centers as an alternative to busy precincts. Citizens here have to request a mail-in ballot every other election year or set aside time to go to a polling place.

Florida: Judge approves voting rights’ groups map of Senate districts | Tampa Bay Times

A state judge on Wednesday approved an entirely new map of Florida’s 40 Senate districts that was recommended by a coalition of voting rights groups. The decision is yet another political and legal setback for the Republican-controlled Legislature and adds much more political uncertainty with the next session less than two weeks away and at the dawn of a presidential election year. “This is another great result for our clients but also a great result for every voter in the state of Florida,” said David King, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. King said voters will elect senators and members of Congress from constitutional districts in the 2016 election, and added: “I’m confident that there are a substantial number of more competitive districts in this map.” The Senate had no immediate comment on Circuit Judge George Reynolds’ order, in which he accepted a map recommended by the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and other plaintiffs. Reynolds’ 73-page ruling orders the Senate to randomly assign district numbers to all 40 districts within three days of a final judgment being entered.

Florida: Rep. Corrine Brown files new challenge to Congressional district changes | Miami Herald

Arguing that an east-west configuration for her district “combines far-flung communities worlds apart culturally and geographically,” lawyers for U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown asked a federal judge Tuesday to void Florida’s latest congressional redistricting plan. The complaint marks the next phase of a legal battle over the state’s political boundaries that has raged for nearly four years. The first two drafts of a congressional plan — approved by the Legislature in 2012 and tweaked in 2014 — were thrown out by state courts for violating a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering. But the reorientation of Brown’s congressional district, which has long ambled from Jacksonville to Orlando but now would run from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west, prompted the Democratic congresswoman to file suit this year against the change. After the Florida Supreme Court officially approved the new district early this month, Brown was allowed to update her case Tuesda

Florida: Voters told to update signatures in advance of presidential primary | Miami Herald

With a presidential primary right around the corner, many Florida voters are being told they must update their legal signatures to ensure that their absentee ballots will be counted. Hundreds of thousands of voters have received letters from county elections supervisors urging them to fill out new voter registration forms or risk having their ballots rejected. The practice of signature verification is becoming increasingly common as more Floridians vote by mail rather than at early voting sites or on Election Day. Now that the Legislature allows voting by mail for any reason, experts say it’s inevitable that it will become the preferred way of casting ballots in Florida. “You MUST complete the enclosed voter registration application and check the ‘signature update’ box so that we can update your voter registration record,” reads a letter from Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Penelope Townsley. “If you plan to vote by absentee ballot in an upcoming election, be sure to submit your signature update at least 15 days prior to the election.”

Florida: Supervisors want new Florida Senate districts by mid-March | Tampa Bay Business Journal

As a Leon County circuit judge ponders plans for redrawing Senate districts, the state’s elections supervisors said in a court document Wednesday that they would like the map to be finalized by March 15. The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections said local officials need time before candidate qualifying in June and primary elections in August to take steps such as remapping counties to establish new district lines, creating new precincts and establishing polling places.

Florida: Elections supervisors to court: Decide Senate redistricting by March 15, please | Florida Politics

Florida’s election supervisors are asking the courts to resolve the state Senate redistricting saga by March 15 to protect the “quality and integrity of the (voting) process.” The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections filed its notice Wednesday with Circuit Judge George Reynolds, who is in the process of deciding how to redraw the state’s 40 senatorial districts. Reynolds, who sits in Tallahassee, held a trial on the matter last week. His recommendation goes to the Florida Supreme Court, which has the final say on a new map. With Florida’s primary election on Aug. 30, the supervisors need lead time “to remap and re-precinct their counties following approval of new Florida Senate districts by this Court.” Absentee ballots must go out 45 days before the primary, and new polling locations will have to determined.