< Fearing Criminal Penalties, Voter Registration Groups In Florida Scale Back

ELIZABETH: Hi. This is Elizabeth (ph) from Cleveland, Ohio. But today, I'm in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I'll be meeting up with alumni from the university where I work before heading to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore for more events. This podcast was recorded at...

ASMA KHALID, HOST:

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KHALID: Well, hey, there, it's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.

SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

KHALID: And today on the show - new state laws that crack down on voter registration drives. We'll talk about why these laws came about and why some groups that work to register voters think that they are dangerous. Ashley, you have been looking into this with Aaron Mendelson and the Center for Public Integrity. So I want to start the conversation with you by just getting a better explanation of who these groups are that work to register voters and why they do that work.

LOPEZ: So the groups that Aaron and I were focused on in this reporting are civic engagement groups - right? - like, people who hold voter registration drives. These groups can be part of a larger network, groups that a lot of us know - the League of Women Voters or the NAACP - or in many cases, they're just sort of community-based groups. A good example of those are, like, church-based groups or an organization that is politically mobilizing specific neighborhoods somewhere.

And what they all have in common is that they sort of act as this middleman between election officials and the voter. They will, one, you know, help people figure out if they're eligible to vote, if their information is up to date or if - in many cases, you know, they just walk people through filling out an application, which can be a daunting task if you have, like, a language barrier or a disability or if you've, like, simply never registered before. And that is sort of the point of these groups is to sort of fill in the gaps and make sure people who are registering to vote - if, for any reason, the other options for registering just aren't working for them.

KHALID: And Ashley, to be clear, these groups are largely nonpartisan.

LOPEZ: Yes. For the most part, these are nonprofit, nonpartisan groups who register any voter, no matter what party. You know, in a lot of states, you don't have to register with any party. So what they're really just trying to do is sort of fill in the gaps where people are not registering online with the state, or just sort of, like, falling through the cracks in some way.

KHALID: So Ashley, there is new laws that are seeking to regulate these groups, which would suggest that there has been some issues with these groups in the past. Are there? And how common is it?

LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like anything, there are bad actors intentionally committing fraud, and there are people who are trying to do things the right way but make mistakes, right? So what we do know is that some groups - and, you know, I looked at Florida specifically because that's where some of the more notable laws were passed and some of the higher criminal penalties were passed. And what we know is that some groups in Florida, in some cases, were not returning applications on time ahead of elections, which is a big problem, right? Like, people thought they would be able to vote in an election, and they show up and figure out they aren't registered - like, that's not good.

And we also know of - about six canvassers were arrested last year after allegedly falsifying 58 voter registration applications in two Florida counties. And, you know, these sort of issues really became a problem for the state. And so they asked lawmakers to sort of step in and create some tougher laws, which is why Republican state lawmaker Rick Roth, who championed these measures in the Florida legislature, told me that they wanted to crack down on some of this behavior.

RICK ROTH: We don't want any hiccups, you know? This is important. If you're going to be registering people, we just tightened up the rules and make sure you do it correctly. And, yeah, it seems onerous to some people, but, you know, this is important. I mean, we don't want some fly-by-night group, you know, getting organized and doing this and not do it right. So, yeah, it tightens up the rules.

LOPEZ: But I should say, experts who spoke to Aaron and I, they told us that they haven't found any evidence that any of these issues are widespread, which is sort of part of the critique of these kinds of laws.

DAVIS: I mean, this is part of a broader storyline that we've seen happen since...

LOPEZ: Yeah.

DAVIS: ...The 2020 election. And the, you know, broader effect of election denialism is that many states passed more restrictive voting laws, saying that, like, we need to be able to trust the vote. We need to be able to trust the vote, even though there was no fraud in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, it was - even Republicans who worked in the Trump administration testified that it was a very well-run election. But the doubts seeded about the election - specifically by Donald Trump - was what a lot of Republican state legislatures used to sort of roll back or change voting laws.

We should also say, Ashley, and you know this as well, like, a lot of states also used that to expand voting and make it easier to vote. There's just been such a patchwork and such a clear response to not just the pandemic, but the role of January 6 in 2020 and election denialism that we've seen dozens and dozens of new voting laws all over the country.

LOPEZ: Yeah. And to that point, I mean, since the 2020 elections, Sue, at least six states have passed laws that crack down on these groups. States like Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Montana and Tennessee, you know, as well as Florida have created new laws in these, like, past few years.

KHALID: Ashley, can we zero in a little bit on what these laws are actually doing? And you, I know, focused a lot on Florida, but did you notice patterns between the substance of what the laws in Florida are going to do compared to some of these other states? And what do they spell out? What's the difference now?

LOPEZ: Sure. So by and large, these new laws create new rules about who can register voters, I mean, how they should ID themselves, as well as, you know, when they should turn applications in, as well as a bunch of other rules. I mean, Florida has this very specific law where they have to give voters, like, a receipt after they register them as a voter. And in many cases, these new laws have come with some pretty stiff criminal penalties if, for whatever reason, they don't follow these rules to a T.

In Kansas, if anyone is, quote, "caught impersonating an election official" - which groups say is pretty vague language - as they register voters, they can face a fine of up to a $100,000 and 17 months in prison. Florida has another good example of some pretty high penalties. Last year, state legislators increased the maximum fine that a voter registration group can incur to up to a quarter of a million dollars per year.

KHALID: And, Ashley, it sounds like that will undoubtedly affect the type of work that some of these voter registration groups have been doing. But let's take a quick break and we'll get to that in a moment.

And we're back. And Ashley, we were just talking about some of the hefty fines that some groups that register voters may now incur, specifically, as you were mentioning, in the state of Florida. I imagine that this will change the way some groups operate and the type of work that they're trying to do to get people registered. What did you hear?

LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, across the country where these kinds of laws have passed, a lot of groups are simply, like, suspending their efforts. In Florida, we know that big groups like the League of Women Voters and the NAACP have stopped registering voters. My reporting partner, Aaron Mendelson with the Center for Public Integrity, spoke to LaVon Bracy. She's a Black woman who runs this group out of a church. And Bracy has personally registered hundreds of people in her community to vote through the years that she's done this work. And she says the penalties in Florida have forced her, as well as other groups, to get completely out of this work.

LAVON BRACY: They couldn't stay in business, literally. We're talking nonprofits where every dollar counts. So we have had to be creative as to how we do our voter registrations.

KHALID: What does that mean - to get creative?

LOPEZ: So in LaVon Bracy's case, she, like, gives people a QR code that sort of directs them to the state website to register to vote 'cause in Florida, you know, outside of these groups, people do get registered through Motor Voter laws. So, like, when they go to the DMV and update their information or, you know, register their car or whatever or register to get a driver's license, that information gets put into the voter file.

So basically, she's sort of removing herself from being that middleman anymore. So she's just sort of directing people to directly go to the state and register that way without being involved. Like, they - this is sort of the work-around that a lot of groups have come to, which is they are still talking to people about voting, but they're just not doing the work of helping them register anymore.

KHALID: Ashley, do you have a sense of how much this could impact voter registration? 'Cause, like, there's more than one ways to register to vote, right? A lot of high schools do it, a lot of libraries. There's other civic programs of just voter registration awareness. I mean, if you're someone who wants to become a registered voter in Florida, there's still many pathways to do that.

LOPEZ: It's still pretty early, but what we do know is in the months after Florida's criminal penalties - like, these stiffer penalties went into effect last year - compared to four years earlier, registration through these kinds of groups went down 95%.

KHALID: Oh, wow.

LOPEZ: Yes. There was a big impact almost immediately on these kind of groups. So we will have a better picture overall of how voter registration looks in Florida. But what I can tell you is, like, we're already seeing a big difference in voter registration numbers in Florida, since, you know, a couple of years ago, for a long time, the Democrats had a voter registration edge. And that has shifted in the last couple of years. And there's definitely a lot of reasons for that, but voting groups have told me that in the mix is this, which is that voter registration groups - community-based groups - have just felt like it is too scary to do this work. They just feel like a lot of pressure. And so if they're worried about the financial costs of making mistakes, but also just the - they don't like the climate in which they'd have to register voters, people have just sort of been scaling back and leaving people to sort of register through the state themselves.

KHALID: And Ashley, even though these groups are largely nonpartisan, it sounds like what you're saying is that these community-based groups are reaching voters who may more often vote Democratic.

LOPEZ: Right.

KHALID: They're, I guess, lower income, more people of color. Is that what you're saying?

LOPEZ: Yeah. That's right. And so voters of color and young voters tend to get a lot of help from these groups. Young voters in particular - you know, when you're registering to vote for the first time, a lot of times when you're 18, it's, like, the first time you even are dealing with sort of government documents in the first place. So they do need a little bit of extra help from voter registration groups - often on campus is a good example.

And then, you know, communities - like, I was - followed a group in Florida that reaches out to voters who don't speak English. It's Spanish speakers who need help figuring out where to put stuff and, you know, what information to provide. And, you know, historically speaking, those have been groups that have voted with Democrats more often. Of course, when we're talking about stuff like Latino voters, there's nuance there. But for the most part, Democrats and experts in Florida have said they think this is contributing to Democrats sort of, like, falling off the sort of edge that they had in voter registration for many years.

DAVIS: I mean, politically, it's really interesting because Governor Ron DeSantis says, you know, he's a very partisan governor. He's very much trying to make Florida a strong conservative state. And it's interesting to see laws try to fix problems that don't necessarily exist, right? Like, there wasn't widespread voter fraud in these drive efforts. But at the same time, I do think a lot of these laws are pretty popular, or the idea of them are popular with people and with voters 'cause if you think the intention of it is just to say, look, we want to have elections in Florida or - insert your state here - have more integrity. We want to make sure that it's citizens voting, that it's people that are registered at the right address, going to the right place, like, broadly speaking, I think people have sort of positive feelings towards methods that make it seem like the vote is more secure.

LOPEZ: Yeah. Well, this is a Republican-led state, and we know that a lot of Republican voters do have concerns about voting issues, like - and election security. This is their constituency is - and there are a lot of very connected and vocal groups in Florida who have been pushing lawmakers to create, you know, stricter laws about stuff like voter registration drives and voter ID and, you know, quote-unquote, "noncitizen voting" - that sort of stuff. So, I mean, a lot of this is coming from the voters who, you know, a lot of the legislature serves at this point.

KHALID: You know, even if you take the idea of whether this benefits or hurts Republicans or Democrats out of the equation, I'm struck by the fact that, Ashley, you were saying, you know, so many of the folks who register to vote through this all are young voters, you know, Latino voters. These are groups that - I remember a few years ago, I did a story about nonvoters. And when you look at who does not participate in the Democratic system as a whole, it tends to be more people within, you know, that demographic group.

LOPEZ: Right.

KHALID: You don't see a lot of young voters participate in elections. And so I do wonder how much this overall just disenfranchises the very people who already don't necessarily participate in the system.

LOPEZ: Right. And that is the larger concern here, especially from the activist class in Florida, like, people who are trying to make sure that all voters - eligible voters - feel like they can participate in elections. And voter registration is that first step in your civic engagement. Like, if you are not registered to vote, it kind of doesn't matter what happens afterwards because, you know, whether we're talking about mail ballots, blah, blah, blah, you can't vote. It is the first step in being civically engaged.

And groups are worried that communities that already had fewer resources to be registered to vote or had existing barriers to register to vote are just going to have fewer resources to sort of overcome those hurdles, especially when we're talking about a big presidential election year, where issues like marijuana and abortion are in the ballot in Florida, which is worth noting.

KHALID: All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

LOPEZ: I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.

DAVIS: And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

KHALID: And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.

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