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PARKLAND, Florida – Ronni Isenberg was absent from college when one of his former neighbors broke into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year and killed 17 people, including one of his friends.
While she watched the aftermath of the tragedy unfold from Syracuse University in New York, feeling too far away from home, Isenberg immediately realized that she had to join her again. other students from Parkland, Florida, to channel his anger towards political support for tougher laws.
Last March, a month after the shooting, Isenberg traveled from Washington to the university to participate in the demonstration of the Walk for Our Lives organized in the mall, organized by Parkland students. She made sure to be registered to vote in Florida, then encouraged her friends from Syracuse to also register.
But Isenberg recently learned that his vote – as well as that of dozens of Parkland students – had probably never been counted.
According to one analysis, about one out of seven postal ballots submitted by electors older than Parkland were rejected or did not arrive in time to be counted. The findings add to the questions about the reliability and fairness of Florida's electoral system, including its vote signing requirement which became a flashpoint in the November narrative between Sen. Sen. Rick Scott (right) and the democrat he toppled, Bill Nelson.
"We wanted to make a change and vote for change," Isenberg said. "I should have had the right to vote and my vote should have been counted."
The problem of Isenberg's vote was discovered by Daniel A. Smith, chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida, who analyzed Florida's open-source voting file. An experienced election researcher in Florida, Smith said 15% of the postal ballots submitted by Parkland residents aged 18 to 21 had never been counted in the mid-term elections, far exceeding the national average.
Among Floridians aged 18 to 21, about 5.4% of postal ballots were rejected or not counted, Smith said. The average number of rejected or unsubstantiated postal ballots at all ages was 1.2%, Smith noted.
"If you vote in Florida and are young in Florida, you have a good chance that your ballot will not be accepted," Smith said. "Imagine going to the ATM, and every 10 times you go, instead of spitting your money, they take it or lose it."
A spokesman for the Broward County Election Supervisor said that he could comment on Smith's findings "unless and until" the bureau reviews its data and methodology.
But the bureau found that the county-wide rejection rate in the 18 to 21 age group was "half" of the 10% discovered by Smith. Of the votes cast in Broward County, regardless of age, 5,464 ballots were not counted – a rejection rate of 2.8%, said the Electoral Office.
More than half of these newsletters, 3,458, were not accepted because they arrived after polling day and could not be counted legally. Others were not signed, contained a mismatched signature, had been signed by someone other than the voter or returned to the electoral office as "undeliverable," according to the country's records.
Under Florida law, election officers must compare the signature of a ballot by correspondence to the signature of the voter registration form.
If the signatures do not match, the voter may file an affidavit, along with a proof of identity, to try to remedy the problem. But the postal voting process must be received at the election office by 5 pm the day of the election.
In a report published in September by Smith, the American Civil Liberties Union concluded that Florida's e-mail system deprives young voters and racial and ethnic minorities of their rights.
According to the report, in the 2016 election, people under 30 accounted for only 9% of postal voters, but about 31% of rejected votes. The report concluded that black voters represented 9% of participants by correspondence but 17% of rejected votes.
In November, when the elections between Scott and Nelson were recounted, many lawsuits were filed against Florida's election legislation.
A lawsuit revealed that Florida election officials had rejected more than 4,000 ballot papers for mismatched signatures. And under the legislation in force, the disputed signatures had to be rectified at 5 pm on polling day, even though the law of the state gave voters up to 19 hours. for their ballot to reach local polling stations. (There is an exception for overseas and military ballots, which are accepted up to 10 days after the election).
Along with the plaintiffs, a federal judge stated that the state's signature concordance standards were unconstitutional. The judge granted Florida voters an extension of 10 days to fix their signature. Last month, the US Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit upheld this decision of the lower court.
Myrna Pérez, voting rights attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said more public education is needed to better inform voters of postal voting deadlines. especially those voting for the first time. But Pérez said she did not think that major changes would be necessary to the condition of state signing, saying such laws would prevent legislators from imposing even more onerous conditions.
"We do not want people to demand a strict voter identity instead of a signature," Pérez said.
Smith suspects at Parkland that many students have registered to vote in high school before their 18th birthday. As he ages, he adds that their signatures evolve.
"Many of these students are going to university, developing a new identity, including more sophisticated signatures," Smith said. "Their new signature may not look like high school civics."
Approximately 250 Parkland residents aged 18 to 21 registered to vote between February 2018, when the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School took place, and on Election Day. Smith noted that more than half of them had voted, an unusually high voter turnout among young voters at a mid-term election.
Many of Parkland's young adults whose votes were rejected say that local and state election offices are to blame.
Luciany Capra, a 19-year-old student from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, said she had applied for her ballot by mail at least a month before the elections. It still had not arrived weeks later, and for two consecutive days, no one answered the phone at the Broward County Election Office, said Capra.
She said that she had finally succeeded on the Friday before the elections. After being put on hold for an hour, "They said to themselves," Oh, you should have got it. "But I never got it," Capra said.
The election office sent it again by mail and she received it on polling day.
Capra filled out the ballot, voting for most Democratic candidates. She sent him back by mail, though she doubted it would happen in time to be counted.
A few days after the election, Capra said that someone called to tell him that his ballot had been rejected because his signature did not match and that a judge had granted him more than time to sign his ballot again.
"I submitted the counting request and signed a lot of papers, but no one answered me," said Capra, a sophomore who voted in her first election. "If there was an error, it was an error on their part."
The Broward County election office said it had been worried for years about the slow pace with which the post office was delivering ballots and other correspondence to voters. He noted that all of Broward County's mail was first sent to a treatment center located in Miami-Dade County.
Reagan Edgren, 19, said she did not think that the problem with her ballot was with the postal service. She said the Broward Election Committee was too overwhelmed to report all postal ballots diligently.
The Electoral Committee records reviewed by Smith show that Edgren, a student at the American University of Washington, D.C., asked for his ballot by mail on October 27th. The archives show that the electoral committee mailed it on October 30 and did not send it back until November 17, nearly two weeks after the election.
Edgren is certain that she sent him before polling day.
"They continued to tell us that voting would be the way to change things," said Edgren. "But when they do not allow our votes to be counted, they basically say we do not have a voice."
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