The watchdogs stated they’ve discovered that over 476,000 Florida voters in 2024 solid ballots with out offering legally required ID.
A few election integrity watchdogs need to know why state knowledge from Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, 2024, seems to indicate that a whole lot of hundreds of individuals all through Florida seem to have voted by mail with out offering the legally required identification.
Performing independently of one another, Kris Jurski of the Florida Individuals’s Audit and Jenine Milum, an impartial administration fraud analyst, concluded that one thing went flawed within the state’s mail-in voting program final fall.
After analyzing the each day knowledge for the 2024 common election supplied by the Elections Division of the Florida Secretary of State’s workplace, Jurski, and Milum, say they found the identical factor—statewide, greater than 476,000 individuals voted with out offering a Florida driver’s license or a state-issued picture ID card or the final 4 digits of their Social Safety quantity, as required by law.
Jurski and Milum informed The Epoch Occasions that there isn’t a query that the state digitally recorded the issue.
“That’s past dispute. Nevertheless, questions stay as to how and why this might occur,” stated Jurski.
Up to now, Florida’s state elections officers have supplied no solutions.
Methodology
The state’s knowledge is offered within the type of multi-column spreadsheets containing strains displaying the title, handle, voter ID quantity, vote-by-mail (VBM) quantity, date of the election, in addition to the dates the VMB poll was requested, delivered, and returned.
On the finish of every line are columns AK and AL. If the voter offered a driver’s license or state ID card, the cell within the column AK is populated with the letter Y(es), if not the letter N(o) is entered.
The identical Y and N format is utilized in column AL, which reveals whether or not or not the voter gave the final 4 digits of his Social Safety quantity.
Jurski and Milum pulled out all of the names that had two Ns within the columns on their line. They then checked to see if their ballots had been returned after which added them as much as arrive at their totals for every county.
Some County Responses
Alachua County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) spokesperson Aaron Klein informed The Epoch Occasions in a telephone interview that he was unfamiliar with the state’s knowledge for his county on Nov. 6, which confirmed that 876 individuals voted with out presenting the legally required ID.
Klein defined that whether or not a VBM utility was made on-line, in-person, or over the telephone, all fields should be crammed in, together with the correct ID verification quantity as required by state regulation.
He stated the quantity should match the quantity on file within the workplace or the poll will not be issued.
“For our personal recordkeeping functions, all functions are scanned into our workplace’s system,” stated Klein, who insisted that nobody voted by mail in Alachua County with out presenting the mandated identification.
Klein stated he can’t perceive how the state’s data might say in any other case.
Dixie County Elections Supervisor Darbi Chaires informed The Epoch Occasions by telephone that she couldn’t clarify how state data might listing 1,091 Dixie County individuals as having voted by mail with out correct identification verification.
In a subsequent telephone interview, Chaires informed The Epoch Occasions that she had since contacted the state for solutions however discovered nothing.
“All I can inform you is we in Dixie County comply with the regulation,” she stated.
The Greatest Numbers
The variety of mail-in voters in Pinellas County seems on state data to have been greater than 169,000.
The workplace of Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Miami-Dade County seems to have had greater than 200,000 mail-in voters vote with out presenting the required identification, in accordance with the state knowledge.
The determine was the best for any county in Florida.
Alina Garcia, Miami-Dade County’s SOE, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
On Jan. 31, Gretl Plessinger, communications director of the Florida Secretary of State’s workplace, informed The Epoch Occasions that she would look into the matter and share her findings.
As of press time, Plessinger has not supplied any data.
“Our findings are indeniable as a result of they arrive from the state’s personal knowledge,” Milum informed The Epoch Occasions. “Accuracy is essential. All I would like is the reality.”
In an open memo directed to Florida election officers, Jurski raised the chance that the statute mandating the ID verifications might have in some way “been ignored” by some supervisors of elections and their workers.
“The identification verification regulation has been strengthened just lately,” famous Jurski in an interview with The Epoch Occasions. “I need to know what the state did, if something, to coach SOE officers on the brand new stricter regulation.”
Jurski acknowledged that there’s a distinction between the passage of a regulation and its execution.
“Personal companies take measures to make sure that their insurance policies are applied. Florida’s election administration would profit from such efforts,” he stated.
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