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More Florida registration tricks

These days, people move around a lot, especially younger folks and those who have not settled in to a long term employment position. So, you move, you fill out a few forms to update your address, and you’re done, right?

Uh, no, at least as far a voter registration is concerned. See. despite the fact that
this form is easily found and advertised as all you need to change your address with Hillsborough’s Supervisor of Elections, there is a minor problem: it can only be used by people who are already registered to vote in Hillsborough County.

In other words, if you moved from, say, neighboring Pinellas County, and filled out this form and mailed it in, you would be out of luck. You would not be registered within Hillsborough County, and Hillsborough authorities might just notify Pinellas that you moved, thus rendering your previous registration invalid.

This happened to a friend of mine. He dutifully filled out the COA form and mailed it in well before the registration deadline. A few days ago, having received neither confirmation nor any other communication from voting officials, my friend called Hillsborough SOE Buddy Johnson’s office and was given the bad news.

Luckily, Pinellas has not yet purged him from their rolls, and he is still maintaining a residence in Pinellas, so, legally and morally and practically, he’s probably good to go, but he’s lucky. He found out before election day that he had a problem, and he has the time and other means necessary to go back to his old county’s polling place and vote.

Why is it so difficult to register and maintain one’s status? Why is a form which is made widely available online have absolutely no warning that one must have moved only within the county in order to use the form? Why didn’t the SOE office contact this voter and inform him that the wrong form had been used?

Were these policies put in place in the name of combating fraud, or in order to maintain the integrity of the election?

Note - a provisional ballot would not have helped in this situation, since it would doubtlessly be thrown out as soon as the SOE determined that the voter was not registered in Hillsborough County.