2020 Election - Local

Before COVID-19 and before the death of George Floyd, Monique Sampson said she thought Joe Biden and President Trump were "different wings on the same bird."

A Tallahassee research organization called Wednesday for “universal” mail-in voting in Florida, a day after President Donald Trump backed the state’s current system for casting ballots by mail.

The non-profit group Integrity Florida released an analysis of changes made after the troubled 2018 elections and suggested the coronavirus pandemic will require going to a universal process in which ballots would be mailed to all voters, with some in-person voting statewide or at the county level.

Voters will have a chance to weigh in this year on who should serve in Florida’s 5th Congressional District seat. The district stretches along the north border of the state from Duval to Gadsden County. Democratic Congressman Al Lawson who has held the position since 2017 is facing two challengers in the primary.

Florida State University researchers are trying to learn how different county jails enable eligible inmates to vote. Early results show great variation across the state.

FSU Graduate Student Elaine Webb, who is compiling the data, said the national jail inmate population is huge.

"There are over 700,000 people nationwide being detained in jails," she noted.

As Florida’s primary election draws near, voting rights advocates urge people to cast their ballots before election day.

All Voting is Local encourages people to vote early, whether by mail or in-person. The group’s Florida director, Brad Ashwell, says Florida should learn from the challenges other states saw during this year’s primaries:

“We’ve seen long lines. We’ve seen lots of problems. In Georgia, they had almost every problem you can imagine and we don’t want to see that relived in Florida.”

Former Miami Heat superstar LeBron James might have taken his basketball skills to the West Coast, but he continues to have an eye on Florida.

His “More Than A Vote” initiative on Friday committed $100,000 to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to help ensure felons are able to regain the right to vote.

Florida Democrats held their annual convention Saturday – this time virtually, in yet another concession to the pandemic.

This year’s Leadership Blue 2020 has added urgency, as the state is considered a must win for Donald Trump to get a second term in the White House. 

The U.S. Supreme Court handed a major victory to Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to allow hundreds of thousands of Floridians with felony convictions to participate in upcoming elections.

A federal appeals court has scheduled oral arguments in a Florida voting-rights case that could open the door for hundreds of thousands of felons to cast ballots in this year’s elections.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is slated to hear the case on Aug. 18, the same day as Florida's primary elections, according to an order posted on the court’s website this week.

In a win for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a federal appeals court on Wednesday agreed to the state’s request for a rare full-court initial review of a voting rights ruling that could open the door for hundreds of thousands of Florida felons to participate in this year’s elections.