Ronni Isenberg was away at college when one of her former neighbors stormed into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year and killed 17 people, including one of her friends.
As she watched the aftermath of the tragedy unfold from Syracuse University in New York, feeling too far away from home, Isenberg immediately knew she had to join other Parkland students in channeling her anger into political support for tougher gun laws.
Last March, a month after the shooting, Isenberg flew from college to Washington to participate in the March for Your Lives demonstration on the Mall, organized by Parkland students. She made sure she was registered to vote in Florida, and then encouraged her friends at Syracuse University to also register.
But Isenberg recently learned that her vote — as well as those of dozens of students from Parkland — was probably never counted.
About 1 in 7 mail-in ballots submitted by college-age voters in Parkland was rejected or failed to arrive in time to be counted, according to a new analysis. The findings are adding to questions about the reliability and fairness of the Florida electoral system, including its ballot signature requirement that became a flash point in the November recount between U.S. Sen Rick Scott, R, and the Democrat he ousted from office, Bill Nelson.
“We wanted to make a change and vote for change,” Isenberg said. “I should have had the right to vote, and my vote should have been counted.”
The problem with Isenberg’s ballot was discovered by Daniel A. Smith, chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida who analyzed Florida’s open-source voting file. A veteran researcher of Florida elections, Smith said that 15 percent of mail-in ballots submitted by Parkland residents between ages 18 and 21 were never counted in the midterm election, far exceeding the statewide average.
Among all Floridians between 18 and 21, about 5.4 percent of mail-in ballots were rejected or uncounted, Smith said. The statewide average of rejected or uncounted mail-in ballots for all ages was 1.2 percent, Smith noted.
“If you are voting in Florida, and you are young in Florida, you have a good chance of your ballot not being accepted,” Smith said. “Imagine going to the ATM, and every 10 times you go, instead of spitting out your money, they take it or they lose it.”
A spokesman for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections said he could not comment on Smith’s findings “unless and until” the office reviewed his data and methodology.
But the office found a countywide rejection rate within the 18-to-21 age range that was “half” of the 10 percent that Smith discovered. Among all mail-in ballots cast in Broward County regardless of age, 5,464 ballots were not counted — a rejection rate of 2.8 percent, the elections office said.
More than half of those ballots, 3,458, were not accepted because they arrived after Election Day and could not be legally counted. Others were not signed, contained a mismatched signature, were signed by someone other than the voter, or returned to the elections office as “undeliverable,” according to country records.
Under Florida law, elections officials must compare the signature on an absentee ballot to the signature on the voter’s registration form.
If the signatures do not match, the voter can file an affidavit, along with proof of identify, to try to rectify the problem. But the Vote-by-Mail Ballot Cure must be received at the elections office by 5 p.m. on the day of the election.
In a report issued in September and written by Smith, the American Civil Liberties Union concluded that Florida’s vote-by-mail system disenfranchises younger voters as well as racial and ethnic minorities.
During the 2016 election, the report stated, people under 30 made up just 9 percent of all vote-by-mail participants but accounted for about 31 percent of all rejected ballots. Black voters made up 9 percent of the vote-by-mail participants but accounted for 17 percent of rejected ballots, the report concluded.