National Voter Registration Day: What You Need To Do In Florida

FLORIDA — The drive to get people to the polls for the Nov. 8 midterm elections in Florida starts in earnest Tuesday with National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan civic holiday observed for the past decade to reach tens of thousands of Americans who might not otherwise register.

• The deadline to register to vote in Florida in the Nov. 8 general election is Oct. 11.
• To register to vote, click here.
• Overseas uniformed and civilian vote-by-mail ballots must be sent out by Sept. 24.
• Domestic vote-by-mail ballots are required to be mailed out between Sept. 29 and Oct. 6.
• The deadline to request a vote-by-mail ballot is Oct. 29.
• The early voting period for Florida counties is Oct. 29 to Nov. 5.
• Counties may also offer early voting from Oct. 24 to 28 and Nov. 6.

Florida is among 39 states that have made significant changes in election laws since the 2020 presidential election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.

Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis called for "voter integrity legislation," adding numerous restrictions to the voting process with the stated goal of becoming a national leader by running the most secure elections in the country.

The Brennan Center for Justice refers to the legislation as "election interference laws."

Between Jan. 1 and May 4, six state legislatures — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma — passed nine such election laws.

The first, Senate Bill 90, requires more information to update existing voter registrations, doubles how often vote-by-mail (absentee) ballots must be requested, limits who can collect and drop off ballots, limits where and when drop boxes may be used, adds required language for non-government groups running voter registration drives, drastically increases potential fines for deadline violations and expands the no-solicitation zone for polling places.

It also prohibits local and state officials from using outside funding for election-related expenses.

Then, in April, DeSantis signed Senate Bill 524, which creates a new state office to investigate voter fraud, increases the penalties for anyone violating state election laws, made "ballot harvesting a felony and requires supervisors of elections to update voter rolls annually.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday the United States “has not always lived up to its promise of equal access to the right to vote,” decrying state legislatures he said “are passing new forms of voting restrictions to limit participating and choose whose vote can count at all.”

“As the late Representative John Lewis, an icon of the voting rights struggle, would say, ‘Democracy is not a state; it is an act.’ Our Founding Fathers understood this, as did the suffragists at the National Women’s Rights Convention of 1848, the other giants of the Civil Rights Movement, and today’s activists working for a freer, fairer, and more accessible voting system. Just as securing and protecting voting rights was the test of their times, it continues to be the challenge of ours.”

Biden renewed his commitment to the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would “address election subversion, remove dark money from politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and fix the gaping holes in voter access left by the Supreme Court of the United States.”

He also said he is doubling both the number of voter advocates appointed to the Department of Justice and the agency’s voting rights enforcement staff, and also give the agency purview over discriminatory laws before they go into effect.

More than 4.7 million Americans have been registered to vote in the Voter Registration Day project to date. More than 300,000 people registered to vote for the first time on the inaugural National Voter Registration Day in 2019. Some 1.5 million people registered through the project for the 2020 General Election, according to the website.

Last year, 233,571 people registered or updated their registration. Though considerably smaller than the number of people who registered for the 2020 presidential election, the number was still nearly twice the number registered in the previous post-presidential cycle, the report noted.

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the project helped 865,015 people register to vote.

A step-by-step process on the National Voter Registration Day website guides potential voters through registration. For all potential voters: Check your registration status, especially if you’ve moved since you last voted, recently turned 18 or changed your name.