Shining new light on Florida voters’ views | Editorial

A newly released statewide survey of Floridians’ attitudes about voting and elections provides some reassuring information at the outset of a highly volatile presidential campaign.

The survey was conducted by the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University over a two-month period soon after the 2022 midterm election. A total of 6,242 voters completed an online survey out of a universe of more than 253,000 who cast ballots in the general election in 2022.

The institute said its findings were weighted to reflect the electorate based on all voters’ age, sex, ethnicity, type of ballot (by mail, early, or in person on election day). The weighting also included the outcome, in which Republican Ron DeSantis won with 59% of the vote.

First, the good news: More than nine out of 10 voters (94%) said they were either very confident (74%) or somewhat confident (20%) that their vote actually counted.

Floridians, in this survey at least, didn’t buy the fiction that votes are systematically discarded by some sinister force.

Of those who voted by mail in 2022, an overwhelming 97% said it was an excellent (67%) or good experience (30%). In the November 2022 election, 36% of voters voted by mail, down from a record high of 43% at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Those are among the assessments from a pool of voters in which 46% described themselves as very or somewhat conservative and 23% described themselves as very or somewhat liberal. Most of the rest (26%) called themselves politically moderate.

Warning signals

The Collins survey contains cautionary notes for the 67 county election supervisors, the ones on the ground who actually send out vote-by-mail ballots, staff early voting sites and count the votes on election day.

Counties work diligently to remind voters they must submit new requests for a vote-by-mail ballot, and that they can track their ballot in the weeks leading up to election day, but too many people still didn’t know that.

A total of 56% of vote-by-mail voters in the survey said they tracked their ballots in 2022, but among those who said they didn’t, 40% said they were unaware that they could.

The Collins Institute recommends a campaign to expand the ballot tracking program to get more voters signed up.

One in four voters (25%) said they believe that it’s somewhat or very easy for “politicians, union officials or the people you work for” to find out how you voted. Only 20% said they believed it’s impossible to find out.

Voters overwhelmingly support the photo ID requirement at the polls (90%), and they trust machine counting of ballots over counting by hand, 79% to 21%.

By some measures, the survey sample was not a fully accurate snapshot of the current Florida electorate.

For instance, this finding is interesting, but it’s hardly typical: Of 3,131 voters who said they engaged in any form of political activity in 2022, nearly one-third of them (1,036) said they donated money to candidates, and that about one-third of those candidates ran for state office.

In addition, 51% of respondents self-identified as strong, weak or leaning Democrat, while 31% said they were strong, weak or leaning Republican.

The actual voter registration numbers at the time of the survey showed that 37% were Republicans, 34% were Democrats and the other 29% were unaffiliated or members of minor parties.

The Republican advantage over Democrats in voter registration continues to widen and today is nearly at 1 million voters.

Information is important

In Florida, there is no such thing as too much information about how people perceive the voting experience.

Too few eligible adults in Florida are registered to vote, and among those who are actually registered, too few of them vote, especially in midterm, non-presidential elections.

Anything that improves the voting experience is a net positive for democracy, which these days needs all the help it can get.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.