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The Miami-Dade County Commission recently approved a resolution by Commissioner Raquel Regalado to urge the Florida Legislature not to penalize voters who have registered to vote by mail.
A bill (SB 90) moving through the Florida Legislature proposes to retroactively cancel pending vote-by-mail ballot requests. As written, any vote-by-mail requests filed before July 1, 2021, would be cancelled automatically, requiring voters to make the request again for the next election. Currently, the requests are good for two years.
“I don’t have a problem with the state changing the time a vote-by-mail request is valid from two years to one,” Commissioner Regalado said. “But I do disagree with changing the rules without proper notice. You’re asking people still reeling from a pandemic to somehow know they can’t vote by mail and then to reapply before the deadline for local elections coming up in August and November. It will create havoc.”
The bill would purge nearly 400,000 existing vote-by-mail requests in Miami-Dade County, forcing the Elections Department and cities holding elections in 2021 to spend significant funds notifying voters they won’t be getting the ballot in the mail they were expecting unless they reapply. The majority of the commission voted to oppose the bill. Regalado suggested moving the effective date to 2022 would at least prevent disruption in the 2021 cycle.
There are five local elections scheduled for 2021, and 107,004 voters eligible to vote in those elections have requested vote by mail ballots that would be cancelled by SB 90. Of these, 46,243 are held by voters over the age of 60. The breakdown of Vote By Mail (VBM) requests provided by the Elections Department:
Sept. 14 – Virginia Gardens (396 VBM)
Oct. 5 – Homestead (7,561 VBM)
Nov. 2 – Hialeah (25,279 VBM)
Nov. 2 – Miami (58,049 VBM)
Nov. 2 – Miami Beach (15,719 VBM)
