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Voter suppression is a term we associate with common practices, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, that were used to prevent Black people from voting during the days of segregation in the U.S. The truth is, voter suppression is another form of voter fraud. In even simpler terms, it’s cheating, and cheating has been around for a long time. In a lengthy, scholarly report written by Howard Troxler for the University of South Florida in 2008, the abuses of the Roman Empire are outlined in great detail. He writes that “escalating abuse of elections was a hallmark of the collapse of the Republic that governed Rome for nearly 500 years before it was swept away and replaced.” He also writes that “the pattern of abuse apparently accelerated over the final century, until the turning point of the 60s and 50s B.C. with a morass of elections delayed, canceled, marred by violence, ruined by bribery or prearranged by bargain.” 

Some things never change. 

Twenty years ago, we woke up to ballot recounts in the 2000 presidential election between George H.W. Bush and Al Gore. The race ultimately came down to Florida and the infamous hanging chads that forced elections staffers to frequently lift ballots to the light to determine if a vote was punched for one candidate over the other. Bush had a powerful ally in the governor’s office: his brother Jeb, who pressured then Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas to end the seemingly endless count. He did. The result landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, which settled the recount dispute by putting “W’’ in the White House. 

It was this historic ending that led many states to invest in the electronic voting systems we now use. But despite vastly improved systems, major flaws – such as cyber security, just to wet your whistle – still exist, and now here we are.

Litigation and voting by mail dominated the election season. For nearly a year leading up to the election, President Trump insisted that increased voting-by-mail would result in greater voter fraud, but the FBI has said there is no substantial evidence to prove that claim. Florida elections departments and Gov. DeSantis also repeatedly contradicted the president. 

Making sure every vote counts was a major concern locally and nationwide, because a record number of mail-in-ballots were anticipated and because tens of thousands of ballots are traditionally uncounted in typical election seasons for a variety of reasons ranging from their late arrival to missing or unmatched signatures that can’t be cured in time. Needless to say, this was not a typical election season. In Florida, the deadline to request a vote-by-mail ballot was Oct. 24, and all mail-in ballots must arrive at supervisors of elections offices no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day. Multiple groups, from the Florida League of Women Voters to the local Democratic Party, discouraged mailing ballots at USPS after October 17. 

The Miami Times, our sister publication, reported on Sept. 16 that almost 8,000 votes were uncounted in the August primary. Politico reported that more than 35,000 vote-by-mail ballots in the state were rejected. According to NPR, more than 550,000 presidential primary ballots failed to make the cut. And the Election Administration and Voting Survey from the 115th Congress reported 318,728 rejected ballots in the 2016 presidential election. 

Alarming numbers like those were behind voter advocacy groups suing the state of Florida.

Florida State House Representative and civil litigation lawyer Joseph Geller believes the Election Day 7 p.m. deadline for absentee ballots is one voting law that must change in Florida.

“If you mail in your ballot by Election Day, it should be counted,” Geller said.

He also pointed to a temporary settlement with Florida’s supervisors of elections in the state’s eight largest counties that will not be reexamined until after the 2020 presidential election.

“We were using what we considered to be a requirement to retain ballot images that are generated by the machines,” Geller said. “The images are generated automatically and are used in the tabulating process, but it’s unclear [to them] on whether they’re required to retain these images as public records.”

If ballot images were kept on public record, votes would have a better shot at being validated in a tabulation process should election results be questioned.

New Voter Majority, Priorities USA, Alianza for Progress, the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans, Dream Defenders and other progressive groups filed lawsuits between March and May claiming Florida elections laws violate the First, Fifth, and 24th Amendments. 

The lawsuits sought to eliminate postage for mail-in ballots in all of Florida, extend mail-in ballot deadlines and remove a prohibition against paid workers collecting mail-in ballots. The suits were eventually consolidated and settled in July, with Secretary of State Laurel Lee agreeing to conduct extensive voter outreach, maximize the use of drop boxes for vote-by-mail ballots and extend hours of early voting. 

Changes to state and local election laws sparked by litigation could make margins of victory larger in this and future elections, preventing races from being decided by less than 1%, as occurred in the recent Miami-Dade County August primary and in prior local, state and federal races.

Comparing Florida to Other States

Some states with the highest mail-in ballot rejection rates from the 2020 primaries have large populations and extensive urban corps. They are California (102,428), Washington (95,261) and New York (84,000), according to NPR. States with the lowest rejection rates from the 2020 primaries include South Carolina (469), Arkansas (383) and Mississippi (315). Yet Harvard University’s Electoral Integrity Project published data in 2016 that shows states on the West Coast producing fairer and better electoral laws. States on the East Coast had lower approval ratings, especially in the South. Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina ranged in the mid-50s. No states scored between 80-100. 

Certain states modified voting practices for the 2020 presidential election in order to improve the ability of voters’ ballots to be counted. California, Rhode Island and Oklahoma are just a few that made changes to their voting systems and practices for the general election that The Miami Times chose to question at random. 

In California, for example, ballots may now be counted within a 17-day period after Election Day, instead of the prior three-day window. Similar changes occurred in Rhode Island. 

“The rules were revised by an executive order by Gov. Gina Raimondo,” said Miguel Nunez, Rhode Island’s board of elections deputy director. “The 14-day period for postmarked mail-in ballots to be opened and certified was changed to 20 days after the election. There was a signature verification system put in place as well.”

Therefore, as of press time, the results of the election were not known and we may still be counting in California, Rhode Island and in other states that count ballots postmarked on Election Day.  

Oklahoma, a far more conservative state than the aforementioned two, boasted progress by posting an instructional video showing people how to complete a mail-in ballot. Elections Board public information officer Misha Mohre also reported an increased use of social media to keep voters informed. Absentee voters’ signatures had to be notarized. Before the pandemic, 12 states required notary or witness signatures with their ballots. 

The witness mandate was unsuccessfully challenged in Wisconsin by Disability Rights Wisconsin. In October, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of reinstating the witness signature requirement. The decision was made pending appeal and while voters had already started returning ballots.

A lack of witness signatures or other witness information was already the leading cause of ballots being set aside in October before being counted in the battleground state of North Carolina, with problems disproportionately affecting Black voters who traditionally vote in person, according to an Associated Press analysis of state election data. Voting rights advocates called the extra step a barrier that would disenfranchise first-time mail-in voters. A witness signature is not required in any of the five all-mail voting states in the West. Proponents of the requirement say it’s designed to prevent voter fraud, while voting rights activists call the practice voter suppression and particularly onerous for the elderly, the homebound and people with disabilities. 

The litigation frenzy in Ohio, where only one drop box was allowed in each of the state’s 88 counties, was ongoing leading up to November. 

Early voting in Atlanta was marked by 3-4 hour waits even in the middle of a pandemic. 

Judges in the swing state of Michigan, where a plot by armed anti-government militia members to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was foiled, ruled in mid-October that absentee ballots must reach county and local clerks offices by Nov. 3 in order to be counted.

The decision – made by a judicial panel of three GOP appointees – reversed a lower court ruling that would have allowed an extra two weeks, so long as the ballots were postmarked before Election Day. Also reversed were provisions that would have let intermediaries deliver ballots to clerks’ offices. That lawsuit was brought by the Michigan Alliance for Retired Americans and other voting rights groups.

Round and round we go. Where we stop, nobody knows. Let’s hope mail delivery picks up after the election.