Elderly Florida residents had their registration switched to Republican — without their knowledge: report

On Wednesday, Local 10 reported that seniors at public housing in South Florida had their party registration switched to Republican — against their will and without their knowledge.

"Despite the security at Haley Sofge Towers, a Miami-Dade public housing building, people with clipboards and Republican Party of Florida caps were in the hallways, door knocking," reported Glenna Milberg. "It made registered NPA Armando Selva suspicious. 'They said, 'We’re doing the renewals on the voter registration, would you like to renew?' Selva recalled. Resident Juan Carlos Salazar was not suspicious at the time. 'I didn’t do anything, but they changed the party,' Salazar said, adding he noticed, 'when they sent me the new registration.' He wasn’t the only elderly resident at the public housing to come forward and say the same thing happened to them."

“People are being taken advantage of,” said Florida Ethics and Elections Committee Vice Chair Annette Taddeo, who also serves in the Florida State Senate and is running for governor. “Lots of these people don’t speak English or are elderly.”

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This report comes after a similar finding in December, in which an 84-year-old Little Havana resident and lifelong Democrat was reportedly "duped" by a third-party voter registration group into switching her affiliation to Republican. And as far back as 2020, another Florida woman was investigated after allegedly switching multiple voters' registrations to Republican ahead of the presidential primary, against their will.

Florida Republicans recently overtook Democrats in overall voter registrations, a longtime trend driven in part by "ancestral" Democrats in the deeply conservative Panhandle region.