Evacuee voter registration lags

Fewer Puerto Ricans than predicted have signed up — most as independents — so far

When Iralisse Huertas-Agosto visited friends in Orlando from Puerto Rico last October, at the height of the 2016 presidential election, she was shocked to hear they didn’t plan to vote.

“They said it didn’t matter,” said Huertas-Agosto, 23. “To me, coming from the island, voting is really important and here they said, ‘Oh we don’t care.’ ”

Now living in Kissimmee with her mother and sister after their hometown in Puerto Rico, Vega Baja, was devastated by Hurricane Maria, one of the first things she did was to register herself and her mother to vote. “Next election, we need to know

everything, because we’re definitely voting here,” she said. “And if the rest of my family comes to live here, they will vote, too.”

With so many leaving Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck on Sept. 20, the influx of registered Florida voters from the island is expected to play a key role in this year’s election and beyond. But so far, the number of newly registered Hispanic voters in Central Florida is

not the big number that many forecast.

Democrats make up less than 30 percent of new Hispanic voter registrations in Central Florida since the end of September, with about 8 percent registering as Republicans and the majority, 63 percent, registering as independents, like HuertasAgosto and her mother.

As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans are able to register and vote immediately.

As a group they’ve also historically identified as independent but voted Democratic, leading party leaders and political analysts to predict a major impact in Democrats’ favor in a closely divided state such as Florida, where Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by fewer than 120,000 votes.

Democratic political strategist Steve Schale warns that his party should not take it for granted that new residents from Puerto Rico will bring on a Democratic surge.

“A lot of people in the party think this is just going to happen,” he said. “But if you look at the data so far, it’s not just happening. It’s not going to happen on its own.”

Estimating exactly how many new voters there are in Florida because of Maria’s devastating impact on the island is as difficult as determining the actual number of evacuees.

The Florida Department of State categorizes voters by race and ethnicity, including as Hispanics, but a further breakdown of whether a voter identifies as Puerto Rican isn’t available.

In Central Florida, where about a third of the million Puerto Ricans in the state lived before Maria, 9,341 new Hispanic voters were registered in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake counties between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31, state records show.

They make up fewer than half of the 20,332 total new voters in the four counties in that period. That includes about 5,000 new Hispanic registrations in Orange County and 3,000 in Osceola County, two of the biggest destinations for Puerto Rican evacuees. Total registrations did see a bump in the last few months of 2017 compared with earlier months.

Also in question is the total number of Puerto Ricans who have moved to the Sunshine State.

While Gov. Rick Scott said more than 280,000 had arrived by December, University of Florida economists said school enrollments and requests for state aid actually put that number at about 50,000.

Other statistics tell a similar story. According to the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles, more than 19,000 Puerto Rican drivers licenses were converted to Florida licenses statewide between Oct. 1 and Jan. 22. Also, about 700 Florida IDs and almost another 2,500 temporary IDs were given to people born in Puerto Rico in the same time frame.

Still, Schale said, “you’re still looking at a pretty significant number. My concern as a Democrat … is that if you want people to be engaged in politics, you have to make the case to get those people engaged.”

The Barack Obama presidential campaign, he said, registered a quarter million new voters in Florida in just a few months in 2008 — part of what he called the cycle of boom and bust for Democratic voter sign-ups in the state, which then ebbs until the next presidential year.

“A lot of people want to vote,” he said. “It took the campaign making an effort to go to where people live.’’

UnidosUS and other groups including the National Puerto Rican Leadership Council and Hispanic Federation plan on not only getting Hispanics to register later this year, whether with a party or as independents, but educating them on how the electoral system works in Florida compared with Puerto Rico.

“There are differences in [the needed] IDs, election days, how often people vote — primary elections versus general elections,” said Jared Nordlund, a senior strategist in Orlando with UnidosUS, formerly the National Council of La Raza. “Voting on the island is a holiday, and it’s not the case here.”

Betsy Franceschini, senior state director of the Hispanic Federation, said registering to vote is not high on the list of priorities yet for evacuees.

“There’s a lot of concern with issues they left behind with the devastation on the island,” she said. “Their hearts and minds are connected with the island.”

Many evacuees are “fed up” with politicians and the federal government’s response to the Maria crisis, she said. “But it’s important for them to understand that once they’re here, their votes can help Puerto Ricans. They can elect people who support and understand the needs of the community.”

The question remains, however, whether they will act out on that frustration through voting or by avoiding politics altogether.

“It’s important to register, but it’s even more important to vote,” said former state Rep. John Quinones, of Kissimmee, the first Republican of Puerto Rican descent elected to the Legislature. “We focus on the registration aspect, but turnout is a lot more important at the end of the day.”

The importance of turnout, he said, “goes for both parties. It’s not automatic that Puerto Ricans vote Democratic, especially when they’re registered as independents. What history tells you is that Puerto Ricans tend to vote for people and not party.”

Huertas-Agosto said she didn’t want to register with a party before she and her mother educated themselves on the issues. But she said she was eager for outreach from local organizations and parties.

“They have to be direct with us,” she said. “Because we are the ones who are going to decide who wins and who loses.”

“But it’s important for them to understand that once they’re here, their votes can help Puerto Ricans. They can elect people who support and understand the needs of the community.” Betsy Franceschini, senior state director of the Hispanic Federation