The Problem

Hurricane season and election season overlap. Every major election year, thousands of Floridians face the challenge of figuring out how to vote at the same time as they are navigating storm recovery. In the aftermath of a hurricane, many voters find themselves displaced, while those who remain face power outages, flooding, road blockages, postal disruptions, lack of internet access, and other hardships that impact their ability to vote just as they impact many other aspects of their lives.

No eligible Florida voter should be unable to vote because of a natural disaster. Voters and election administrators deserve predictability, clarity, and consistency when disasters strike in the lead-up to an election.

There are many common sense measures that have been proven to work safely and effectively to support disaster-affected voters in Florida. However, under current law, the voting support provided in the aftermath of a hurricane is often very different depending on what Florida county you live in.  A voter flooded out of their home in one county may have more voting support and options than another voter flooded out by the very same storm but in a different county. We don’t think that’s fair.

In addition, election officials currently have to wait for the Governor to issue a specific Executive Order before they know what voting support they will be allowed to provide or how they will be able to replace damaged polling places or find additional poll workers. Nothing can be done before the Executive Order is issued, resulting in unnecessary delays and uncertainty for election officials and voters alike. Furthermore, these Executive Orders list specific counties, and in the past they have not necessarily include all counties impacted by the disaster.

The Solution

We are urging the Florida Legislature to pass legislation that ensures all disaster-affected Florida voters have an equal opportunity to participate in elections occurring in the aftermath of a disaster, no matter what county they live in.

Senator Tina Polsky (D-Boca Raton) and Representative Lindsay Cross (D-St. Petersburg) filed legislation on this issue for the first time in the 2025 Legislative Session (SB 1486 and HB 1317), and Representative Fiona McFarland (R-Sarasota) incorporated this issue into a broader emergencies bill in (HB 1535). Although these bills did not become law in 2025, they showed that there is bipartisan support for improving the help available to voters and election officials in the aftermath of natural disasters.

We are advocating for core disaster support measures to be available for voters and election officials in disaster-affected counties, without need for the Governor to issue an Executive Order. For example:

• Allowing Supervisors of Elections in disaster-affected counties to add additional early voting sites and days, so that voters have centralized places to vote regardless of their precinct, including on Election Day if necessary.
• Enabling voters displaced by disasters to call the Supervisor of Elections to request a vote-by-mail ballot be sent to a temporary address where they are staying, rather than having to download, print and send in a signed paper form.
• Empowering Supervisors of Elections to identify and manage reserve poll workers when other poll workers have been displaced or impacted by the disaster.
• Ensuring all voters in disaster-affected counties are provided with ready access to information about voting options and election changes both online and through the phone, text messages, government websites, and social media platforms.
• Providing election officials with the necessary tools and resources to run elections smoothly under extreme circumstances by creating strategically placed election equipment reserves.
• Improving disaster preparedness and response through minimum requirements around election emergency plans and comprehensive post-disaster assessments that include the many factors that can impede a voter’s ability to vote (such as displacement, localized flooding, power and internet outages, and transportation issues).

These recommendations build on measures that we already know work, because many were used successfully in 2022 and 2024 when multiple major hurricanes made landfall in advance of Election Day. Unfortunately, the same measures were not available to all voters impacted by those storms. Support depended on what disaster-affected county the voter was registered in.

We are advocating for legislation that makes support measures predictable and consistent, to ensure all disaster-affected voters have fair and equal access to the ballot regardless of which disaster-affected county they live in. Join us!