News Flash: Restricting Voter Registration Activities Deters Voters from Registering

Voter Registration Crisis in Florida

So, I’ve been thinking about the NYTimes’ article the other day about party registrations across the states, and how “The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis.” There’s no question that new party registrations are down for Democrats, in Florida and elsewhere.

But there are many reasons for the party registration decline, particularly in Florida.

Let’s take a closer look at what Shane Goldmacher (an excellent reporter with whom I’ve chatted about Florida voter registration data in the past) and his editors likely thought was a throwaway sentence at the start of article when trying to explain why “fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.”

Here’s the seemingly anodyne sentence:

“Few measurements reflect the luster of a political party’s brand more clearly than the choice by voters to identify with it — whether they register on a clipboard in a supermarket parking lot, at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in the comfort of their own home.”

Let’s begin by setting the record straight: In Florida, almost no new (or renewing) voters of any party are registering in a “supermarket parking lot” or anywhere else when they are out and about.

That’s because the opportunities to register to vote have been sharply curtailed in recent years by the Republican-controlled Florida legislature. Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed to make the costs on “Third Party Registration Organizations” (3PVROs) so prohibitive that these groups are no longer able to effectively assist eligible citizens to register to vote, or reregister to vote if they’ve changed residences.

Republicans in Florida have been trying to restrict voter registration drives for years.

In 2011, the Florida legislature tried to limit 3PVROs when it passed HB 1355, which Governor Rick Scott signed into law. HB 1355 had an immediate and substantial impact on voter registration efforts of 3PVROs, which I document in an article using difference-in-difference methods to analyze new registrations over time. HB 1355 was widely ridiculed, including on The Daily Show. After a year or so of litigation, the most onerous parts of the law were eventually blocked by a federal court and groups eventually resumed their voter registration efforts.

As a result, during the 2010s, a wide variety of groups went about their business of registering and reregistering voters—particularly nonpartisan groups like the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, Mi Familia Vota, Vote Riders, and my personal favorite, UF’s Chomp the Vote. Over that decade, hundreds of voter registration groups in Florida—nonpartisan and partisan alike—assisted hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens to register to vote.

But in 2020 and then again in 2023, Governor DeSantis signed into law two draconian bills (SB 90 and SB 7050) that placed onerous restrictions on and criminalized the activities of 3PVROs.

Among other restrictions on the franchise in Florida, SB 90 restricted the activities of 3PVROs to register voters in Florida. It reduced the amount of time group had to deliver a voter registration form to Supervisors of Elections in the county in which the applicant resides, placed disclaimer and delivery restrictions on 3PVROs, required 3PVROs to inform applicants how to register online, and levied steep fines on 3PVROs for noncompliance.

Only a few legislative sessions later, SB 7050 upped the ante even more. The law, signed by Governor DeSantis, imposed more restrictions on 3PVROs’ voter registration activities. Groups registering voters are now required to re-register with the Division of Elections every general election cycle, and must provide the names and addresses of every member of their group assisting fellow citizens to vote. 3PVROs must return to SOEs any applications they collect within ten days after they are filled out (reduced from a two-week window); penalties for groups who fail to do so in a timely manner can reach up to $250,000 total. Groups may also be fined $50,000 per individual who impermissibly collect or even handle the voter registration applications solicited by the group. SB 7050 also requires that 3PVROs provide all eligible citizens they help to register with a detailed receipt, but at the same time, prohibits the groups from retaining any personal information from the voters they’ve assisted to follow up with them. Wrongful violations of these rules can result in a third-degree felony.

The cumulative effects of SB 90 and SB 7050 is 3PVROs are being regulated out of existence, and the result is that the number of new and renewing voters 3PVROs register every year has slowed to a trickle.

We can see the drying up of 3PVRO registration drives in the figure below, which is from last week and is generated by the Florida Division of Elections.

In 2018, 3PVROs accounted for over 96.5k newly registered voters (so, not even including all the existing voters who they assisted in updating their registrations). In 2024, after three years of SB 90 and a year of SB 7050 in place, 3PVROs accounted for just 21.6k newly registered voters.

Over the first 7.5 months of 2025, the number of newly registered voters who were assisted by 3PVROs is only 725!

That’s LESS THAN 1% of voters 3PVROs registered in 2018!

As the table above shows, though, it’s not just 3PVRO registrations that are down; new voter registrations are down across the board.

Even when comparing apples to apples—say registrations in 2020 to 2024, two presidential election years—there were over 200k fewer new registrations in Florida.

This is despite Florida being a growth state. The overall number of new registrations over the period dropped by more than 271k — that’s a 23% drop in new registrations!

Yes, the number of registered voters going though the DMV did rise from 2020 to 2024. But the 40.8k increase in total new registrations pales in comparison to the drop in every other (except Libraries) category, including 3PVROs. Mail applications, and even new online registrations dropped over the period.

But let’s take a deeper dive into why the crackdown on 3PVROs has likely had a pronounced impact on Democrats in Florida.

Prior to SB 7050, 3PVROs reliably registered roughly 5 percent of all new and renewing voters in Florida. That 5 percent of all Florida voters who rely on 3PVROs, however, is not evenly distributed across the electorate, as the table below clearly shows.