An audit by a right-leaning nonprofit flagged nearly 24,000 voter files in Florida’s Palm Beach County because of issues that include registrations in multiple states, double voting, voting on behalf of the dead, and registrations by “apparent” noncitizens.
The PILF report, however, suggested that weaknesses already “baked into the voter registry” need to be addressed.
It found more than 20,000 registrations, for example, of voters who were also registered in New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. PILF didn’t cross check the data with other states.
Of the double registrants, 225 “apparently voted twice in 2016, 2018, or both,” the report stated.
Also, more than 2,200 active registrations matched records of apparently deceased people, based on the Social Security Death Index. Of those, more than 100 “actually cast ballots in recent elections in Palm Beach County after their dates of death.”
Moreover, the audit revealed 413 voters were registered twice, and “some” also voted twice.
“The examples indicate that duplicate registrations are likely generated by both human error and potential faults within the voter registration system itself,” the report stated. “Regardless, the registration system should catch such errors but it is not doing so.”
The audit also discovered 68 registrations that were canceled because the people later admitted they weren’t U.S. citizens.
“Noncitizens usually become aware of their voter status during an immigration procedure,” the report stated. “Prospective naturalized citizens are often confronted with their pre-existing voter registration records, causing great alarm and a rush to quickly cancel their registration.”
Still, PILF found several people who skipped the citizenship question on their voter registration form, or even filled in they weren’t citizens, but were registered anyway. Some of them also voted, even repeatedly.
One issue that may be adding to the problem is that the voter registration database, by default, checks “YES” to the citizenship eligibility box in the system, so the staff needs to manually uncheck the box “if, in fact, the box is unchecked on the actual application before them,” the report noted.
“Every effort should be taken to educate staff that eligibility questions should be reviewed as carefully as other questions. When these systems fail, it is the immigrant—not the data entry staff member—who suffers potential criminal and deportation consequences.”
Voter Fraud, Interference Risk
The report highlighted that the county’s voter rolls aren’t “accurate and current,” as required by Florida law.This raises the concern of voter fraud, especially because “under Florida law, a registered voter can call or write the Supervisor’s office and request a mail-in ballot for any reason,” the report stated. “The caller need only provide a name, address, and date of birth in order to receive a ballot by mail.”
Inaccurate rolls also add to the potential for damage caused by a cyber intrusion, PILF argued, since officials may have trouble discerning between data deletions or manipulations by hackers and “pre-existing defects.”
“Reasonable and proper voter list maintenance requires ownership of, and sweating the small details,” the report stated. “Each weakness baked into the voter registry is now an election security threat.”
PILF said it submitted its findings to Link, the county supervisor of elections, in May “for a line-by-line review, to discern necessary list maintenance efforts according to federal and Florida statutes.“
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he thinks the problem is “quite prevalent across the nation” and “definitely prevalent in Texas.”
