■ How to keep and check your eligibility to vote.
Tips on how to keep your place on the voter rolls
Have you moved or not voted recently? If so, you could be on the road to losing your eligibility to vote.
The good news: It’s a long road and there are plenty of ways to stay registered.
The easiest? Vote the next time an election comes up or contact county election officials with your new address information.
Broward Elections Supervisor Pete Antonacci and other elections supervisors across the state are cleaning up their voter rolls, required every two years under state law.
The offices are constantly updating the rolls after voters tell them they have moved and when they receive information about voters dying, becoming convicted felons or being mentally incapacitated.
The current effort is to find other people who shouldn’t be listed as voters who may have slipped through the cracks.
The Broward office used U.S. Postal information in April to identify 4,000 voters who have moved.
The ones still in the county are being sent voter registration cards with their new addresses and voting information. Those with addresses outside the county will be sent postcards seeking to verify they no longer live in the county.
The office is also sending out about 300,000 postcards to people who haven’t voted or contacted the elections office in the past two years, asking them to respond and confirm their address, Antonacci said.
Those who don’t respond to the postcards will get a second notice and then a final notice. If they still haven’t contacted the elections office, they will be moved to the inactive voter list. Antonacci says he’s going to do something that isn’t required this year: He’s also going to send those people notices that they have been put on the inactive list, telling them of the change and how to become an active voter again.
Inactive voters can still vote. They are treated almost exactly like active voters and are free to vote by mail or show up at the polls in any election. When they provide their current address information, they’ll be directed to their correct precinct.
However, those who still don’t vote through two general election cycles after being designated inactive — and who have made no contact with the elections office — are removed from the voter rolls and ineligible to vote until they re-register. Only five voters were removed for being inactive and not voting through two subsequent general election cycles in 2017 and 2018, according to records provided by the elections office.
General elections are held in November of even-numbered years. The next, in 2020, will include the presidential election.
Antonacci said it’s best for inactive voters to clear up their situation with the elections office before going to the polls, to cut down on the lines for other voters.
“All this stuff sucks up poll worker time,” he said.
In August, every registered voter in Broward will be sent a brochure from the elections office, with a form they can send back to register to vote by mail or to update their address, signature or party affiliation. Brochures returned as undeliverable are another way for the elections office
to identify voters who may have moved.
The number of county voters moved to inactive status for not responding to the elections office’s mailed requests totaled 49,164 in 2018 and 27,549 in 2017. There are currently 1.2 million registered voters in the county.
Records provided by the elections office show that 13,037 people were removed from the county’s voter rolls in 2018 and 14,501 in 2017 because they had died, were a convicted felon whose civil rights had not been restored, were mentally incapacitated, were not of legal age or were not a U.S. citizen.
Former Broward Supervisor Brenda Snipes was sued in federal court in 2017 by the conservative American Civil Rights Union, claiming her office was not doing enough to remove ineligible voters from the county’s rolls. U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom ruled in March 2018 that Snipes was meeting the state’s requirements. That decision is currently on appeal.
The elections office has one other piece of advice for people who register or update their registration information when renewing their driver’s license: Pay attention to the party affiliation box. Those who leave it blank will lose any party status they might have had and will be unable to vote in the state’s March 17 presidential preference primaries, which are open only to party voters.