Action! Inactive Voters in Florida
15% of Florida's registered voters are considered inactive as of February 2024. Who are these inactive voters?
There are 15 million registered voters in Florida, over 1.2 million of whom had inactive status in 2022, which doubled to 2.4 million people with inactive status in 2024. States like Florida are increasing their list maintenance activities, scrubbing the rolls of inactive voters more regularly. Who are these inactive registrants, and what share of them actually turn out in elections?
Over recent years, more concern has been focused on the accuracy of voter rolls, particularly following the 2020 and 2022 elections, leading some states to adopt new legislation establishing stricter list maintenance requirements. Specifically, a change to Florida's policy around elections and list maintenance was passed in 2023 ( CS for SB 7050 ), requiring that each supervisor of elections conducts list maintenance at least once a year. If a registered voter has neither turned out to vote, nor requested a mail-in ballot, nor updated their registration information, nor confirmed their address with the supervisor of elections within a certain period, they may be considered "inactive"—and eventually removed from the voter rolls if they do not take further action. As detailed in Section 98.065 of the Florida Statutes, inactive voters are removed from the rolls after not requesting a vote-by-mail ballot, not updating their voter registration information, and not voting after two general elections of being inactive.
By analyzing statewide voter files for all registered voters in Florida over four election cycles (2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022), we aim to better understand inactive voters, whether or not they later turn out to vote, and how inactivity has changed over time.
Where are the inactive voters?
Click on the map to view statistics for all of Florida. Zoom in and click on each county to see statistics by county, and zoom in more to see the data by precinct.
Our findings suggest that there is considerable heterogeneity across Florida’s 67 counties when it comes to list maintenance activities (Cao et al., 2020), but also that some inactive voters—despite being ignored by parties and campaigns—do become mobilized to vote before they are ultimately removed from the rolls.
Demographics of Inactive Voters
Inactive Voters in 2018 vs. 2022
Explore the dashboard below, showing inactive and active registered voters in Florida in 2020 on a statewide level, by county, and by precinct.
Discussion
References
Cao, J., Kim, S. S., & Alvarez, R. M. (2020). Heterogeneity in Voter List Maintenance Practices: A Study of Florida Counties. APSA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2020-rqn3n
Fla. Legis., 2023 Reg. Sess., CS for SB 7050. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/7050
Fla. Stat.§ 98.065 (2023).
Merivaki, T. (2020). “Our Voter Rolls Are Cleaner Than Yours”: Balancing Access and Integrity in Voter List Maintenance. American Politics Research, 48(5), 560–570. https://doi-org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/10.1177/1532673X20906472
Voting and Election Science Team, 2023, “2016 Precinct-Level Election Results”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NH5S2I, Harvard Dataverse, V2.0
Voting and Election Science Team, 2023, “2018 Precinct-Level Election Results”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UBKYRU, V2.0
Voting and Election Science Team, 2023, “2020 Precinct-Level Election Results”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/K7760H, Harvard Dataverse, V2.0
