Pinellas County residents go to cast their voting ballots at the Coliseum polling precinct on Nov. 8, 2022. (Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he had no intention of extending the deadline to register to vote in next month’s presidential election, even as voters in a broad swath of Florida have been forced to evacuate their homes because of Hurricane Milton.
“People can register today,” he said on Monday, the deadline to do so. “There’s nothing inhibiting you registering today. The storm has not hit yet.”
The response disappointed Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida.
Screenshot of Amy Keith, executive director of Florida Common Cause, on Oct. 8, 2024.
“The governor said that there was nothing inhibiting people from registering yesterday, while we had parts of the state under mandatory evacuation orders. We had people in line waiting for gas. We had folks desperately trying to board up their houses and, as I said, really trying to clear out the debris from Hurricane Helene so that it doesn’t get picked up by the winds that are coming from Hurricane Milton,” Keith said on a Zoom call Tuesday.
“It is a very chaotic time on the Florida Gulf Coast and, unfortunately, we’re not getting that support for voters from the state.”
Common Cause and other voting and civil rights groups contacted DeSantis last week, asking for a number of voting changes in response to Hurricane Helene’s impact on voters in counties affected by the storm.
That included extending the voter registration deadline from Oct. 7 to Oct. 15 statewide because “many voters are likely displaced and now located in a different county from that in which they are currently registered.”
Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power dismissed those concerns, saying the call for extending the voter registration deadline was a “story as old as time.”
“Every election cycle these liberal interest groups want the deadline extended. We have online voter registration, and what stopped them the last 1 years and 11 months,” he wrote on X on Monday. Just another excuse because the @FlaDems are being out-registered.”
‘We’re not going to change any registration deadline’
DeSantis did say that after Milton moves through Florida “we will see what damage is there, and if I have to do a similar executive order that I did in [Hurricane] Ian and then I did for [Hurricane] Helene, we’re happy to do it, but we’re not going to change any registration deadline.”
Prompted by a request from the Florida Supervisor of Elections (FSE) for permission to change polling locations and drop boxes and voting-by-mail procedures after Hurricane Helene’s impact on 13 counties, DeSantis did sign an executive order last week giving them the flexibility to make some but not all of the changes they requested.
Keith applauded those changes, but said that in addition to the support that those supervisors of elections received, individual voters in the state deserve support as well. She listed more flexible in-person voting options such as having vote centers available on Election Day that don’t require voters to show up at their assigned precinct because they have been displaced by the storm.
Meanwhile, the supervisor of elections offices in both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties were closed Tuesday and may remain so for the rest of the week. Hillsborough officials said that potential office closures on Thursday and Friday “will be assessed as the storm progresses.” Pinellas says its offices will be closed through Thursday due to Hurricane Milton.