TAMPA, Fla. — Hillsborough County’s supervisor of elections is voicing concern ahead of March’s municipal election in Tampa — and Florida’s new voter law might be to blame.
Vote-by-mail numbers are way down compared with four years ago while thousands of voters might be unaware they need to submit a new vote-by-mail request under the new law.
“We’re concerned about the numbers. We’d like to see a lot more,” Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer said.
Latimer says the upcoming Tampa municipal election is one of the first since the general election in November to use Florida’s new voting law, which among other changes, requires people to apply for a vote by mail ballot after each general election cycle rather than every other.
So, following the recent November midterm election, every vote-by-mail request must now be renewed.
“It would’ve expired at the end of the 2022 election,” Latimer said.
The numbers suggest thousands of people are unaware of the new law’s requirement to submit a new vote-by-mail request.
So far, for the upcoming March 2023 municipal election, only about 12,000 city of Tampa voters have requested a mail-in ballot. In 2019, that number was closer to 58,000.
“People aren’t aware that they need to request a new vote by mail ballot,” Latimer said.
Also under the new law, vote-by-mail requests require providing a Florida driver’s license number or the last four digits of your social security number.
Latimer says voters need to get used to the idea of renewing their vote-by-mail request after every general election. You can do so by visiting votehillsborough.gov.
The registration deadline for Tampa’s upcoming municipal election is Feb. 6.
“We know that generally, a third of our electorate vote by mail, 1/3 votes early and 1/3 votes election day,” Latimer said.“So, we certainly need to get those numbers up.”
Several years ago, state lawmakers tried the same thing, requiring voters to renew their vote by mail request after each general election. But Latimer says confusion and other issues led lawmakers to reverse that decision two years later.
For now, the new rules remain in place, even as the state’s voter law faces several ongoing court challenges.
Latimer says vote-by-mail envelopes also used to have a simple check box on them to let the election’s office know a voter wanted to keep on voting by mail. That’s now gone, too.
Voters who miss the deadline to request a vote-by-mail ballot can still vote early and, of course, on Election Day.