manpower into voter registration , believing that enthusiasm for the candidate will outweigh any amount of work by clipboard-holding community workers . State data also show that , even in peak years , voter registration drives only account for about a quarter of the voter applications .
Even so , Florida just saw three statewide races decided by less than 0.5 % in November . Democrats aren ’ t willing to wait around until July for a Democratic nominee to rally disengaged voters . Nor are Republicans sitting idly while Democrats set out more than a year ahead of the election to register voters . “ We ’ re doubling and tripling our efforts ,” said Gruters , the Florida Republican Party chairman . “ They ’ ve helped us probably get more focused on this area , to tell you the truth .”
Since 2011 , the Democratic Party has sent local election offices almost 10 times the 65,000 registration applications that the Republican Party of Florida has submitted . But this summer , for the first time since the state began tracking third-party voter registration organizations , the Republican National Committee signed up to register voters in the state . The Trump-affiliated America First Action Super PAC also established a Floridaspecific voter registration organization on Aug . 15 , called Florida First .
Gruters , a state senator and 2016 co-chairman of Trump ’ s Florida campaign , said the party has dedicated 16 employees to registering voters across the state , and hired Matt Parker , a field strategist who worked for Gov . Ron DeSantis ’ campaign , as a $ 180,000-a-year registration director . Republicans also have been holding voter registration drives — including one in Pembroke Pines that drew some protesters this month because it was held at a gun show .
Even DeSantis , Florida ’ s Republican governor , is getting the state in the game . He announced Wednesday that Florida would join a multi-state electronic voting database that requires that member states send postcards to the homes of eligible but unregistered voters to tell them in a nonpartisan manner how they can register .
“ Voter registration is a priority for all of us ,” said Trump Victory spokesman Rick Gorka , “ to ensure that we elect Republicans up and down the ticket in 2020 .”
The Democratic activist base , on the other hand , is more fractured . Hundreds of thousands of voters have been registered over the last decade by organizers representing the nonprofits that organize in minority communities and receive their funding from national donor organizations like left-leaning State Voices and America Votes . This year , SWAG , a network of nonprofits working in cooperation with former gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum , aims to register a whopping half-million voters - 300,000 more than the Florida Democratic Party hopes to register by the time Democrats select a nominee in July .
Most that work will be nonpartisan , leaving voters to choose a party - or none at all - on their own . But , depending on the amount of money that Gillum is able to raise and dole out as he pursues an overall goal for the party of registering 1 million voters , the SWAG network expects to conduct more partisan registration through its dark money affiliates . ( On Thursday , Gillum announced that he ’ s released $ 1 million to voter registration organizations .) “ We will be doing the largest [ 501 ] c4 registration we ’ ve ever done ,” said Andrea Mercado , executive director of New Florida Majority , part of the SWAG network . “ We think it ’ s important that we have some voter registration efforts where we ’ re pretty explicit about who we believe potential voters should be supporting .”
Jorge Mursuli , the voter registration guru tasked by Gillum with keeping in touch with dozens of independent operations registering voters , believes partisan registration will be crucial to defeating Trump .
Mursuli spent years leading Democracia USA , a nonprofit created to organize in Hispanic communities in battleground states . In Florida , he has helped register close to 100,000 voters , with the assumption that most would support Democrats even if they register as independents .
But it ’ s also true that an independent voter remains something of a wild card for the party . And Mursuli thinks Democrats need to be more aggressive in pushing new voters to register as Democrats if they ’ re going to beat Trump — one reason that Gillum is now steering resources into voter registration by 501c4 dark money groups .
Democrats say they ’ ve learned the lesson . Nonprofits like the Miami-based Florida Immigration Coalition have already sent organizers into the field , and dozens of new Florida Democratic Party staffers have fanned out across the state in minority communities . Juan Peñalosa , executive director of the Florida Democratic Party , says the party has registered more than 9,500 voters since June — more than it registered in the entire off-year ahead of last year ’ s midterm elections .
“ We are seeing , in the age of Trump , an unprecedented level of interest ,” said Arceneaux , the former Florida Democratic Party executive director . “ People are just so much more amped because the president is in 100 percent campaign mode every day . We ’ ve never had that .”
GOP and Democratics Florida Independents David Smiley Jacksonville , Florida September 2019