TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Voter registration information is a public record in Florida, but it hasn’t always been that way.
It became public in 2006, but following Wednesday’s arrest of a 20-year-old Naples man accused of changing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ address in the voter registration system, supervisors plan to ask lawmakers to take the records out of the public view.
Anthony Guevara is charged with unauthorized access of a computer and altering a voter registration without consent. His attorney, Mike Carr, said he is just a young man with too much time on his hands.
“On a lark, thought he would see if he could access famous people, and that’s what he did,” Carr said.
Guevara’s online information shows he is a registered Republican.
“He doesn’t hate the governor or anything. He was just playing around,” Carr said.
Leon County Elections Supervisor Mark Earley said the arrest within a day of when the governor showed up to vote Monday afternoon should be a message to others.
“I think it speaks to the seriousness with which we take these kind of voter fraud instances,” Earley said.
But Carr said this should be a wake-up call.
“If somebody had malice, you could go in and easily change hundreds of thousands of addresses and stuff and throw the election into chaos,” Carr said.
Earley said the “I’m not a robot” feature prevents large-scale attacks.
Still, supervisors plan to revive an effort to remove voters' registrations from public record.
“I think the key benefit is just peace of mind for voters. We get a lot of complaints that all of this information we give to you just so that we can vote is out there, public knowledge. That’s not what I signed up for,” Earley said.
It’s also important to know that when the address change form is submitted, it doesn’t actually change your voter file. It goes into a queue, where local elections staff review it, so any wholesale attacks would be noticed and thwarted.
Guevara is free on bond. He is set to be arraigned before a judge on Nov. 23, the Monday before Thanksgiving.