Florida Watchdogs Raise Questions About Mail-in Voting Practices in 2024 General Election

In this photo illustration, the names of the candidates for the 2024 Presidential election, including Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, appear on a vote-by-mail ballot in Miami, Fla., on Oct. 2, 2024. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A couple of election integrity watchdogs want to know why state data from Nov. 5 and Nov. 6, 2024, appears to show that hundreds of thousands of people throughout Florida appear to have voted by mail without providing the legally required identification.

Acting independently of each other, Kris Jurski of the Florida People’s Audit and Jenine Milum, an independent management fraud analyst, concluded that something went wrong in the state’s mail-in voting program last fall.

After analyzing the daily data for the 2024 general election provided by the Elections Division of the Florida Secretary of State’s office, Jurski, and Milum, say they discovered the same thing—statewide, more than 476,000 people voted without providing a Florida driver’s license or a state-issued photo ID card or the last four digits of their Social Security number, as required by law.

Jurski and Milum told The Epoch Times that there is no question that the state digitally recorded the problem.

“That is beyond dispute. However, questions remain as to how and why this could happen,” said Jurski.

So far, Florida’s state elections officials have provided no answers.

Methodology

The state’s data is presented in the form of multi-column spreadsheets containing lines displaying the name, address, voter ID number, vote-by-mail (VBM) number, date of the election, as well as the dates the VMB ballot was requested, delivered, and returned.

At the end of each line are columns AK and AL. If the voter presented a driver’s license or state ID card, the cell in the column AK is populated with the letter Y(es), if not the letter N(o) is entered.

The same Y and N format is used in column AL, which shows whether or not the voter gave the last four digits of his Social Security number.

Jurski and Milum pulled out all the names that had two Ns in the columns on their line. They then checked to see if their ballots had been returned and then added them up to arrive at their totals for each county.

Some County Responses

Alachua County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) spokesperson Aaron Klein told The Epoch Times in a phone interview that he was unfamiliar with the state’s data for his county on Nov. 6, which showed that 876 people voted without presenting the legally required ID.

Klein explained that whether a VBM application was made online, in-person, or over the phone, all fields must be filled in, including the proper ID verification number as required by state law.

He said the number must match the number on file in the office or the ballot is not issued.

“For our own recordkeeping purposes, all applications are scanned into our office’s system,” said Klein, who insisted that no one voted by mail in Alachua County without presenting the mandated identification.

Kris Jurski of the Florida People's Audit. Courtesy of Kris Jurski

Klein said he cannot understand how the state’s records could say otherwise.

Dixie County Elections Supervisor Darbi Chaires told The Epoch Times by phone that she could not explain how state records could list 1,091 Dixie County people as having voted by mail without proper identification verification.

In a subsequent phone interview, Chaires told The Epoch Times that she had since contacted the state for answers but learned nothing.

“All I can tell you is we in Dixie County follow the law,” she said.

The Biggest Numbers

The number of mail-in voters in Pinellas County appears on state records to have been more than 169,000.

The office of Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus did not respond to a request for comment.

Miami-Dade County appears to have had more than 200,000 mail-in voters vote without presenting the required identification, according to the state data.

The figure was the highest for any county in Florida.

Alina Garcia, Miami-Dade County’s SOE, did not respond to a request for comment.

On Jan. 31, Gretl Plessinger, communications director of the Florida Secretary of State’s office, told The Epoch Times that she would look into the matter and share her findings.

As of press time, Plessinger has not provided any information.

“Our findings are indisputable because they come from the state’s own data,” Milum told The Epoch Times. “Accuracy is very important. All I want is the truth.”

In an open memo directed to Florida election officials, Jurski raised the possibility that the statute mandating the ID verifications may have somehow “been ignored” by some supervisors of elections and their staff.

“The identification verification law has been strengthened recently,” noted Jurski in an interview with The Epoch Times. “I want to know what the state did, if anything, to train SOE officials on the new stricter law.”

Jurski stated that there is a difference between the passage of a law and its execution.

“Private businesses take measures to ensure that their policies are implemented. Florida’s election administration would benefit from such efforts,” he said.