The Florida Roundup - COVID data lawsuit, voting in 2024 and it's been five years since Hurricane Michael

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

The state of Florida settles a lawsuit over COVID infection information that it fought for two years, voting in the 20-24 election will begin in about a year and there are new laws that may change how you cast your ballot (19:14), and it has been five years since Hurricane Michael smashed into parts of the panhandle (37:13).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for listening this week. On June 4th, 2021, the state of Florida stopped delivering daily information on COVID-19 testing, infections and deaths. At the time, a spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis said COVID cases had dropped significantly and Florida was, quote, returning to normal, noting the availability of vaccines during that summer. Instead of the daily reports, the state was going to release the data each week. Today, that information comes out every two weeks. Now, at the time that the state stopped its daily COVID update, almost 37,000 Floridians had died primarily from the virus. According to the latest data from the department of health through the end of september of this year over 91 000 residents have died from covet 19. well this week the state agreed finally to hand over the statistics that it originally said it

did not have that it does have and it amounts to 25 gigabytes of data, more than two years worth of infection rates, vaccinations and deaths. The state settled a lawsuit by releasing the reports and while not admitting any guilt, will pay the one hundred fifty two thousand dollars in legal costs by those who sued. state taxpayers, what could this information about COVID infections have meant during the Delta and Omicron variant surges, about testing, about risks to people and rewards of returning to normal? And what does this fight for information tell us about how state government is supposed to operate in the sunshine here in Florida? This is where we begin this week here on the Florida Roundup with Jason Salemi, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida. This is where we begin this week here on the Florida Roundup with Jason Salemi, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida. Professor Salemi, welcome back to Florida Public Radio. How could this data contribute to our understanding of COVID in Florida? Oh, well, obviously a number of different ways. I think the most obvious

is empowering people to actually be able to make informed decisions about how they navigate the pandemic. You know, if we have access to granular data that can enable businesses, schools, local communities, even families to make decisions that are specific to their situation, you know, rarely have you been able to give a single overarching, here's the state of the pandemic in Florida. It often depends on the who, the when, and the where. Is it the elderly only? Is it really impacting people living in rural areas? Is it minoritized populations, healthcare providers, service workers? So having more granular data is likely to lead to more tailored and hopefully more effective actions that people can take.

I think the other big thing that it does is when you have governments and health organizations provide detailed data to the public, to me it fosters a sense of transparency. You know, misinformation is spreading all over the place. Trust has been eroding everywhere. It saddens me when I hear the perceptions that people have of our very hardworking people at the State Department of Health. They're often underpaid, understaffed, and they still did amazing work. And I think they deserve our praise and not criticism. So I think once we get open sharing of data, which to be honest, has been done in some sense, I think that just

improves everybody's engagement with the data and trust in our public health agencies. Your first point, though, about making better decisions or having the ability to have granular data to make decisions, what kind of decisions are you talking about there? Because, you know, the state, through executive order and through legislation, has made certain decisions for local governments and said that it's the state government that makes these decisions regarding vaccination policy, for instance, regarding states of

emergency, even that local authorities could put into place? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I mean, one of the things that we can actually evaluate with granular data like this, that is at the county level and at the age level and at the race and ethnicity level, you know, prior to vaccination rollout, we have to think way back when now, 75 to 80% of all COVID deaths were among seniors, people 65 and older. Those were the highest risk. But at least in part, due to differential vaccine uptake in different age groups, 40% of all COVID deaths during the peak of that Delta surge was actually in people younger than 65. So our ability to not only navigate what's the state of the pandemic now,

but how well are things working? Are we getting good vaccine uptake in rural counties with a lot of minority groups? And that helps us again to tailor our approach. And that is exactly what happened in Florida when we first rolled out the vaccines. I think it wasn't necessarily done in an equitable way. We also didn't reach out to people who had built the trust of the people who live in those communities. And by being able to monitor the

data, which at the time we had very specific vaccine information for each county, we were able to say, well, okay, this isn't working. Let's modify our approach. So it's decisions like that, that granular data help us to engage in and tailor our actions based on what the data say. The state of Florida in those early days of vaccination in the wintertime of 2020, 2021 did initially target the elderly population, senior citizens for the first rollout of vaccination availability, and then also healthcare workers. But let me ask you, Professor, the state has argued that the daily data releases that it stopped in June of 2021 were no longer necessary because

the state of the virus and the availability of the vaccines back a couple of years ago. How does the prevalence of a virus or vaccines affect whether or not data is publicly released or should be? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think, you know, people forget that actually early on in the pandemic, Florida did something that initially no other state did, which was release individual level data on everybody who was testing positive. In fact, those data sets are still up on their site. And the most recent one has 1.3 million cases. So for a very long time, they were actually providing more granular data than just about any other state. As you alluded to, fast forward to June 2021, and now

it became that these PDF reports summarizing information were going to be made available. Now, again, I don't think, I think we can overanalyze the data when it's provided daily. I think in order to get a handle on what's transpiring in the pandemic, what's more important are the underlying trends. And so I don't necessarily think we need daily data, new data every single day, you know,

shoved down our throats. Because again, I think we can over-respond. I think as long as we have weekly data we can monitor trends in what's happening in the pandemic so you know i think even i guess my big concern with all of this i know that we've got this settlement and there's going to be a release of data in a different way but to be perfectly honest as somebody who's interacted with these data since the beginning of the pandemic and still relies on what the department of health makes available right now you know in their PDF reports, they are not perfect,

but they not only give you daily, weekly, biweekly rates of conditions, but they break it down to give you case fatality rates, mortality rates. That's important. My concern is that let's see what happens with these changes. I've read the department's response about a shift that these COVID data, like so many other reportable conditions in Florida, like meningitis, tuberculosis, they will now be presented on Florida charts. And all that I've read they have to provide are counts of cases, counts of vaccinations, and counts of death stratified by all these variables, counts alone will not be very useful to the public. It is then taking that information

and calculating rates, calculating things that are more meaningful and informative. So I just, I honestly hope we don't look back at this huge expenditure of taxpayer dollars and realize that it actually ended up worsening the meaningfulness of data that the state is providing to the public. We're speaking with Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida, Jason Salemi, about this week's settlement of the state of Florida agreeing to release 25 gigabytes of COVID infection, vaccination and death numbers that had been collected and the source of a lawsuit over the course of two and a half years. Professor Salemi, are you satisfied today at the level of data being released from the Department of Health in Florida regarding COVID-19 that individuals can make

informed decisions for their behavior? Well, I'm an epidemiologist, so you can never give me enough data. And that's what I've tried to do since the beginning of the pandemic. How about as a Florida resident, take your professor robe off maybe. I honestly feel like those PDF reports that were being provided, you can get a pretty good handle on like, look, let's be honest, even though cases was part of this, officially reported cases, when people test positive for COVID, that is meaningless now at this stage of the pandemic because many people aren't getting tested or they're getting tested at home and those

numbers don't officially get reported. So now we've already transitioned to wastewater data that of course does not depend on testing behavior, does not depend on what kind of test you use. So it's long been a better reflection of viral spread. And for communities that have these wastewater collection systems, that's a great way to monitor the level of infection in our communities. So with that, I am satisfied that it does as best as any other it from Florida charts right now or the CDC, you can break down COVID-19 death data by race, ethnicity, by single year of age, by, you know, by race. You can get it by sex. So you can already get death data, both crude rates, age-adjusted rates. You can get everything that you would want on death data right now. We can get hospitalization data.

The thing that's lacking, I would say right now is vaccination data. If we're trying to monitor boosters, we don't get that. Yeah. Hasn't that gotten a lot more complex though, with the number of boosters and the types of, of, of vaccinations now available compared to the, that winter of 2020 and the spring of 21. It absolutely has. And giving people a deluge of information on this shot, that shot doesn't help. But what does help, I think the CDC has been transforming to this is just what percentage of the population is what we would call up to date with recommendations on vaccinations. And I think that's the most salient piece of information that we can give

people right now. A lot has been made about Florida's response to COVID-19, Governor DeSantis' leadership and decision-making process and decisions that he ultimately made in the state legislature, perhaps put into place. But as one, I guess, measuring stick here is to look at fatalities, to look at the death rate. And there was a study in the Lancet medical journal, it was published in Lancet, that looked at the death rates statewide here in Florida

and across all the states from 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, through the end of July of 2022. And Florida was 12th best in the nation on a per capita number. In other words, its death rate was the 12th lowest in the nation. How would you describe the fatality rate, the ultimate, I suppose, effect it's taken a toll. I don't love to compare to other states because that's not the gauge. If we've got over 91,000 people in Florida who have died because of COVID-19, that is not something that is trivial no matter where we rank. call all cause excess deaths florida is kind of middle of the pack the problem is the comparisons we have different weather in florida we have different population density we have different

distribution of race ethnicity all of these different ages absolutely yeah that just makes it really challenging to do comparisons to other states and say wow we did so much better or worse so i think that's the inherent problem i think think it's caused an immense toll. And I think if we look back and say, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? Hopefully that can help us to plan for what's next. Jason Slemy is the Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of South Florida. Jason, nice to have you back on the program. Thanks for your expertise. Thanks for having me, Tom. Well, one of the plaintiffs who sued the state for this COVID-19 information was

the Florida Center for Government Accountability. Barbara Peterson is the executive director of that organization. Barbara, nice to have you back on the program as well. Before we talk specifics about this particular lawsuit, how will this data be handed over? What's the form of this information that it's going to take where folks like epidemiologists like Jason are going to get a hold of. Barbara Peterson, are you with us? The executive director at the Florida Center for Government Accountability. I'm here. There we go.

No problem. We got you now. So how will this data be handed over as part of this settlement? As you said, we received 25 gigabytes of data. And when we started reviewing the records we obtained from the Department of Health, we found that there was a fair amount of personal health information that should have been redacted before the records were released to us that wasn't redacted. So the very first thing we did was to comb through those records to redact that personal health information, which is exempt from disclosure by both state and federal law. And we're going to do one more.

So let me pause right there, Barbara. So is it accurate to say the state health department released information because of this lawsuit that it that was exempt from public disclosure that it should not have released? That's correct. And we found it and notified the department. And what was the response? They asked everybody to give the records back or to destroy them. And did you? And we what we did was we redacted all of the personal health information, then sent the redacted documents back to the Department of Health to make sure we had satisfied the exemptions that we had had, you know, basically acted all of the exempt information. And did the department give it its blessing? It did.

And we have an email chain to that effect. And we're going to do, just to err on the side of caution, we're going to be completing one more review to make sure we got everything. And once that review is completed, we will put the documents in a drop box and then allow anyone who wants access to have access. The settlement has no monetary damages except for the legal costs. And of course, there's the embedded staff time to prepare all this. There's no financial penalty. Why did you agree to have no financial penalty? Well, the Florida public records law does not allow for damages and we weren't seeking damages.

What we were trying to do is make sure that the people in Florida got to see the data that they had been seeing on a daily basis. And as part of this settlement, as of October 29th, the Department of Health will be releasing vaccination counts, case counts, and deaths. So it'll be the same data they were releasing. And this is what was so odd, because when we made our request, we were told that the records were exempt from disclosure. The exemption the department cited says that this kind of information is exempt unless release is important to the public health and safety. And so someone in DOH made a decision that COVID data was not important to the public health and safety. And this was at a time when Delta was raging through the state of Florida. Florida's government transparency laws arguably have eroded over the past several years.

A new law exempts, for instance, the governor's travel records. There's a 2022 law that exempts records for searches for public universities and colleges. Supporters say these exemptions are needed for privacy protections. What say you? I say no. And why not? Well, the travel records, you know, it's critically important to know who the governor is traveling with, who the governor is meeting with. You know, we have to make sure that we can trust what's happening in the governor's office. And that travel records exemption was based on security concerns, but it applies retroactively. So how is there a security issue for records relating to the governor's travel six months ago? Well, arguably, because it could show a security strategy, for instance, that law enforcement uses to make sure that the

governor, his family, and others traveling with them are safe? Security strategies are exempt from disclosure. So that information could be redacted under that exemption. Barbara, big picture here. Florida's government transparency is in its constitution. Only the legislature can carve out exemptions that you speak about, for instance, out of public necessity and can be no broader than necessary. That's the language. How are those standards changing? Dramatically. I don't know that our current legislature or the legislature in the last five or six years actually thinks about the constitutional right of access or that constitutional standard when they're drafting and creating these exemptions. Barbara, we've got to leave it there.

I apologize for the interruption and the short time, but always a pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today. Thank you. Barbara Peterson, the Executive Director at the Florida Center for Government Accountability. Now, coming up one year from now, you may be voting in the 2024 election.

Vote-by-mail ballots will be going out a year from now. Early voting sites will be getting ready. Election day is approaching. There's three new election laws since the last presidential election cycle. So what do you think about election security? Email us now, radio at thefloridaroundup.org or call us now, 305-995-1800. How will you vote in the twenty twenty four election? The process vote by mail early or in person on Election Day. And why are you making those decisions? Three zero five nine nine five eighteen hundred. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for joining us. Next week on this program, we'll be talking about immigration. A year ago, the Biden administration launched a new effort that hoped to alleviate the crisis on the southern border.

It promised an alternative to the dangerous journeys many migrants make to escape violence and disastrous economies. The idea was to have migrants sign up for humanitarian parole and get a sponsor in the United States before coming. sign up for humanitarian parole and get a sponsor in the United States before coming. 30,000 people a month are allowed to enter from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, many coming to Florida and thousands more want to. The program is the best hope we've had in years, she told me. But she said the waiting hurts. What's at stake here in Florida? How does this effort by the Biden administration impact Florida's efforts to crack down on undocumented migrants?

And how does the immigration issue impact you and your vote? Email us now. Radio at the Florida Roundup dot o r g radio at the Florida Roundup dot org. And we may include your comments next week. Today, we're talking about voting in about a year. you may be casting your ballot already in the 2024 election. Believe it or not, yeah, about a year away. Florida has made election security and the way you cast your vote big issues over the past few years. So do you vote by mail, in person, on Election Day?

Why? What do you make of all the attention on the process of voting? Do you need a candidate to commit to accepting election results before making your choice? Call us now, 305-995-1800, 305-995-1800. Your call is coming up in a moment. This month, there have been two voter fraud stories in Florida making headlines. In Tallahassee, 69-year-old Marsha Irvin has been charged with felony voter fraud. She was convicted of a felony and served time in prison. Her probation, though, does not end until next month, so she was not eligible to vote in 2020 and 2022,

but she was able to register to vote with the state, and she did cast her ballot. The second case this month is from the Villages, where Robert Rivender was charged with felony forgery and fraud for allegedly voting for his dead father in the 2020 election. He also has a felony conviction on his record and has been paying restitution. Now in Florida, felons have to complete their present time, their probation, finish paying fees and fines and restitution before being able to legally vote again. Florida has made several changes to voting since the last presidential election, including creating a special law enforcement agency to investigate elections. Brian Corley is along with us now. He is the supervisor of elections in Pasco County.

Supervisor Corley, thanks for spending some time with us today. Appreciate it. Pleasure to be here. New election laws require government agencies like the Department of Corrections to report more frequently information about who may not be included in voter rolls on county voter rolls because of felony convictions. How do you think that's working so far? Well, it's maybe not ideal as it could be. You know, we're in the trenches. I speak for my colleagues as supervisors where, you know, we're not privy to all the information from other counties and certainly the statewide level, et cetera. So it's certainly a bit of a challenge. I think it's something that just requires a state level view, much like I think Alabama

implemented recently with a clearinghouse of a definitive adjudication of whether someone is eligible or not. I think it's within 45 days. I would not mind Florida going to that type of model, to be honest with you. Is that a change that you'd like to see put in place before 2024? Well, so my colleagues and I have put forth our legislative priorities for 2024. And literally the first sentence says

that the Florida Supervisor of Elections respectfully requests that no substantive changes be made to Florida's election code. The concerns we have is we're dealing with the last three sessions, SB 90, SB 524 and SB 705. Those are still working through the court challenge. And so, you know, ideally, no. But if we're going to, we do we do one of our requests. If you're going to do something, legislature, maybe consider an establishment of a statewide database of felony offenders, completing with all terms of sentence, et cetera. So, yeah, respectfully, don't do anything, ideally, but if you do, address that, if that makes sense.

That's the one change or one additional change you, as an election supervisor, would support ahead of the next election cycle in a year from now. Is that right? Exactly. We want to make sure that those that are registering to vote are eligible and those that are voting are eligible. I think we all agree on that. So you mentioned the three laws that have been passed since the last presidential election, the three election laws. They do a lot of different things, changes to ballot drop box, create an election investigations unit, changes to third party voter registration efforts, among others. Were they needed? Well, you know, we can always fine tune what we do. There's there's some there's some things there that I, you know, I think my colleagues are generally supportive.

You know, it's a couple of things. For example, if if somebody presents themselves for a driver's license and is a non-U.S. citizen, there had been no mechanism to share that data. If you get a driver's license and you say, I'm a Canadian citizen, that data should be shared with the Department of State Division of Elections. I, as the former president of our association, was actually calling for that back in 2015. And so now that's literally coming online, I'm told, within the next month or so. So they're going to do a complete data swap of that. You talk about the third party. We had cases where we've, in Pasco County, we had situations where voters were not eligible to vote because it was their turn in after the book closing

statutory deadline. We were getting pre-filled applications out from groups out of Washington, D.C. that were horribly, erroneously inaccurate. Existing voters, voters who had not lived at that address for 10 years, people who had been deceased, children, and even pets. I can't make that up. So there's some things in there I think that's going to lend itself towards some, you know, we're trying to find a balance, I think, of integrity and access, if that makes sense.

Brian, yeah, I think it does make some sense. And finding that balance has been infused with politics. I'm going to ask you about that in a moment. But Harriet has been listening into our conversation from Williston. Harriet, thanks for calling the Florida Roundup. Nice to have you on. Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, I've worked as a campaign organizer a little bit and just knocking on doors, trying to encourage everybody to vote no matter you know what party they belong to and um and i'd like to make a complaint about our legislature um they're trying to make it more difficult to for people to vote and they put in that mandate to put the last four numbers of social security num um not your social security

number or a driver's license, and an extra envelope, extra piece of paper, I think we have to put in the ballots now, for vote by mail. And that's going to cost us money. But the state, from what I've been told by the supervisor of elections, the state isn't financing it. The local communities have to finance it. So, Harry, let's just make sure that fact check with Supervisor Corley about that disclosure, the inclusion of the last four of a Social Security number or the driver's license in a vote-by-mail ballot. No, I think, Harry, it's confusing a couple things. There had been a proposal, I believe it was in, I think it was maybe SB 524 in the 2022 session that would have required exactly what Harry is referring to.

But we actually were able to point that out. I actually led the committee on that to report to the Secretary of State. So that's not necessary is what you're saying. Is that correct? It's not necessary. But I think what Harry is referring to is when you request a ballot to provide the last four of your social or your driver's license or ID number when requesting it. So we can validate it in our office with the requester. That is a new, a relatively new provision. We haven't really had many issues with that. Well, in January, I was at the delegation meeting here in our county with Senator Perry and State Representative Clemens. And I know about the Supervisor Elections Committee and the meeting

and the results, but the bill was supposed to be after a study was done. So I didn't know whether the bill had went into effect or whether they were going to cancel it. Harry, I think- Yeah, no, we were able to get that killed during the session. Yeah, glad we could clear able to get that killed. You have decried what you've called, quote, some government officials who have politicized the electoral process. How has politics affected the process of voting as we look at a big presidential election cycle coming up? Well, that's been an ongoing pet peeve of mine since I've been doing this since 2007. You know, there's one there's one function, one office that should be completely part of nonpartisan and politically agnostic.

That's the SOE office. And so when you have what appears to be sometimes politics hijacking elections, I just like to make sure that we have again, we're trying to find that balance of access versus integrity. So it's more of a generalized statement. I prefer that the rules of the road be known for everyone well in advance, and that everyone have access to vote, and that we're trying to make sure that we have integrity in the process. So there is certainly, you know, certainly a balance in that endeavor. Yeah, Marissa is listening into this conversation in St. Pete. Marissa, thanks for calling in. You're on the radio. No problem. Thanks. I have been voting by mail for probably close to the past decade, and I will be voting by mail this year.

Something that I like to do is to be able to research the candidates as I'm voting. And to vote by mail to me is very important. upset about this year is the fact that in December, December 2022, it went into effect that if you are registered to vote by mail and you didn't check the back of your ballot in the last the last time you voted, you will not be receiving those ballots automatically in the mail. Yeah, Marcy, you're speaking about kind of the re-registration or re-request of a vote by mail ballot. I think now, Brian, it's every two years that a Floridian who wants to vote by mail needs to request those ballots. Is that correct? Yeah, pretty much. It's for each election cycle. So that's absolutely correct.

But an election cycle is two years. That is correct. As long as it's made after, like, for example, if you do it today, it's good through the end of this calendar year. And so actually, excuse me, through the general election of, if you do it today, through 24, and then you'd have to re-request, in essence, the day after. But yeah, that was a challenge for us because we had about 80 some odd thousand voters who had signed up when it had been four years back after 2020. So we had to reach out to them. And so I know that's been an interesting outreach initiative for my colleagues and I. We've added 35,000 PASCO voters back for Vote by Mail.

And Vote by Mail has become, as we speak of, has become politicized. There's so much misinformation about that that voters will call me up, constituents, and I have to tell them we don't forward them to anybody. You have to request it. Of course, we mentioned, as Harriet mentioned, you have to verify who you are. They're not affordable per law. And we check every signature. So it is, in my opinion, a safe, secure way to vote. I've not seen evidence of the contrary. Martin is listening from Gainesville and joining the conversation. Martin, go ahead. You're on the radio.

Yes. Good afternoon. Marissa is not going to be happy with this comment, but I enjoy voting in person, and I feel like we should have a national holiday and expend the necessary resources to make sure that there are voting sites in every neighborhood, in every city in our nation, so that people can do their civic duty and actually go and represent themselves personally, so there's no chance for any sort of voter fraud. And it would solve a lot of problems and would also instill a sort of a national mindset about it is time to vote. It's our day to vote. And people would unite on that day and represent themselves. So, Martin, I appreciate that. I remember going into the voting booth with my parents on those election days many, many years ago as I first experienced it. But are you saying to do away with vote by mail

and to only have voting on a single day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November? I think it's such a process that's rife for fraud, and it's been contentious on both sides. Well, you just heard Brian Corley say that he knows of no problems when it comes to vote by mail in Florida. Well, nationally, of course. Martin, sorry, we lost the connection. You still with us, Martin? Martin, you still with us? Yes, sir. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, you dropped out for a second. Go ahead and finish your thoughts. It's certainly obvious that it's been an issue in other swing vote states. I don't necessarily think that that's true, Martin. I mean, these issues have been adjudicated.

There have not been massive recalls of votes that have been cast by mail in any state, swing state or otherwise. It was not my suggestion that there was something that was proven, only that it was a contentious issue. Well, okay. No question, it's right for things that can be done fraudulently. I appreciate it. That's what I'm saying. Thank you, Martin.

I appreciate that clarification. And I want to put that to Brian Corley, the Pasco County election supervisor, because, Supervisor Corley, you have been very critical about voter fraud claims after the 2020 election. In fact, you wrote, I believe that history will not be kind to those who are cognizant of the truth and yet choose silence for political expediency. How do you think history is treating those who supported and still support to this day claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen? presidential election was stolen? Well, it's like this. After that statement, I received a whole bunch of not so nice emails, which is fine, but it involved some threats against yours, truly involving the FBI and law enforcement. So I'm only going to speak to Pascoe. But to Martin's point, you know, and that's a great example of a great dialogue here,

because you have Marissa, who's, you know, advocating vote by mail. And I think I articulated some of the safety measures. One of the ironies of vote by mail is that as the chairman of our legislative committee in 2013, we had in my county alone 109 voters who requested a vote by mail ballot and just forgot to sign the outside envelope. And under that existing law, we couldn't count it. Now now you can cure it and here's the irony of how things can can help towards integrity and access because now the voter has the ability to cure it so when we a signature doesn't match or it's certainly not there we reach out to the voter and you know i'm over two million votes cast in my tenure and i think i've had one scenario where it was delivered to the wrong address the neighbor and like an 85

year old neighbor didn't notice the name, sign it, and send it back. The point is, if we reach out to you and you think there's a match, that's integrity and also access. But the National Holiday, I grapple with that. The National Holiday, let me just speak to that if I can real quick. Real quick, if you could, Brian. Yeah, real quick on time.

You know, we have Veterans Day, and a lot of Americans spend the day drinking beer and having a barbecue and not paying homage to our veterans. My daughter's currently active duty Navy, so I'm not sure the national holiday would do it. I think we should we owe it to those that wore and wear the uniform. It should matter the day. Florida has three ways to vote in person, early voting nights, weekends, et cetera. So the availability is there. Well, our thanks to your daughter for her service. Brian Corley, the Pasco County election supervisor. Brian, thanks for your time. Thank you. John Kennedy is with us now. John's a

longtime reporter in the Capitol Bureau of USA Today Network here in Florida. John, you heard a lot there from Floridians talking about what they would prefer in voting and obviously a lot of the voting changes that have taken place in the last three years. What do you make of all this conversation? Well, it's interesting. supervisor corley uh makes a good point about the uh sort of the lack of data that uh is out there for voters and for the professionals like the supervisors to rely on when it comes to whether somebody is eligible or not to to vote especially i mean the the population of people that have felony convictions against them. You know, it's the onus is on the voter to find out whether or not they are eligible to vote.

And that's a very, you know, challenging situation because there is no court data readily available that can track someone's fees, fines and court costs that are that are out there. If you maybe are living in one county and maybe you committed your felony in another county, it's just very difficult to do. John, how how different will registering in the process of voting be for Floridians a year from now compared to the last presidential election? Floridians a year from now compared to the last presidential election? Well, perhaps the one of the more obvious areas is that idea of trying to get the vote by mail registration. The fact that you have to register for it or you have to request a vote by mail ballot for every election cycle. Some people may still be under the impression that, you know, oh, I asked

for it, you know, oh, I asked for it, you know, two years ago or four years ago, and I should be getting it again this year. Well, they may find out that they're not. There's also some further restrictions on and further penalties on groups that help register voters. They have to turn in these ballot registrations quicker and more efficiently. John, we got to leave it there. John Kennedy with USA Today Network in Florida. This is the Florida Roundup. Thanks again for listening. I'm Tom Hudson. Five years ago this week, Hurricane Michael crashed into Florida's panhandle.

The storm was devastating for communities in its path. Homes, jobs and lives were lost. Now many residents who lived through that disaster say they're still struggling to recover. Regan McCarthy from our partner station WFSU in Tallahassee has more. Today at Mexico Beach, sunbathers dot the sugar white sand, waves gently lap the shore, and children play in the surf. It's hard to believe it's the same place where five years ago, high winds from a Category 5 storm combined with storm surge to completely wipe away homes, leaving nothing but rows of foundations behind.

Forests were bent and broken, and many families were left homeless and jobless. Yeah, Michael's got a lot to answer for, in my opinion. John Burgess lives about 30 minutes away from Mexico Beach in Panama City. He lost his home to Hurricane Michael. The walls just literally just siding canned off and I looked up and the ceiling, the roof just went flying off. Recovery has been underway for five years, but there's still a long way to go. In Mexico Beach, new homes are under construction as far as the eye can see. A few new businesses have opened

and tourists have returned, but the storm's scars remain, both on the area's landscape and its people. It's kind of heartbreaking to see some of the places that just, you know, we're supposed to have recovered and got over it, but it really hasn't. After the storm, Burgess and his wife were out of work for months. The home they lived in was too damaged and they had to move. And finding a new place they could afford was hard. Burgess says after Michael, rent prices skyrocketed,

and it's been a struggle to find a place to live. The place they're renting now still has hurricane damage. My wife's got a job as a pre-K teacher now. And even between the money that we make together, it's still really hard to find somewhere that we could actually afford to move into. The storm left thousands of people homeless, causing demand to rise and the rent to rise with it. Housing is a big concern for area resident Jake Warrington.

I've actually had a lot of friends of mine that had to move since Hurricane Michael, and a lot of their situations were like that. Because, I mean, honestly, Bay County's always been kind of a poor area. Warrington says another major obstacle to recovery the community's facing is employment. After the storm, many local businesses shuttered, some because of damage or because they had no access to power, and others because no workers were available. This place is kind of dead now. You got a few food trucks and I think one general store

up the road. Warrington says sometimes he feels so frustrated by the area's slow recovery, he considers leaving. It's sad and it honestly breaks my heart. It's almost driven me to want to leave this area because of the fact that we've been so neglected since the storm. But this is his home, or at least it used to be. And he's hoping someday it might start to feel that way again. The healing process is what sucks. I don't see Panama City, Mexico Beach, Youngstown,

any of the areas that used to be, I guess you could say, home, being home for another 20 years. As residents on Florida's Forgotten Coast continue working toward recovery five years after Hurricane Michael, they're hoping the struggle is worth it. I'm Rekin McCarthy. Michael went from a tropical storm to a deadly Category 4 monster in only about 30 hours. went from a tropical storm to a deadly Category 4 monster in only about 30 hours. Reporter Tristram Corton was with the U.S. Air Force Reserve on a flight right into Michael just as it made landfall to gather historic information to help better understand such big and fast-growing storms. This is his story, originally broadcast in 2018. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the U.S. Air Force Reserve is getting ready to fly a C-130 Hurricane Hunter into Hurricane Michael. Lieutenant Colonel Sean Cross gives a briefing. This will be the 53rd's

ninth and final mission into Michael, a massive category 4 hurricane barreling towards the Florida Panhandle. Historic flight obviously, you know, it's a strong powerful hurricane that's making landfall on the Florida Gulf Coast. The mission is to launch cardboard tubes containing data gathering instruments into the storm. The tubes are called dropsondes. They get loaded into metal chutes and then shot out of the plane's belly. The data from the dropsondes is transmitted back to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. This is where the information used in the forecast and advisories comes from. Wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, temperature, the dew point, or how much moisture the storm is holding.

These missions are more vital today because of the warming climate. Trapped greenhouse gases are heating the oceans. When Michael formed, the temperature in the Gulf of Mexico was about 84 degrees, roughly 3 to 4 degrees warmer than the October average. The warmer the water, the faster and stronger storms can grow. Warm water is hurricane fuel. Hurricane Michael powered up quickly and continued intensifying as it approached the shore. That's why it caused so much destruction.

The data from this flight will help scientists figure out the mechanics of how that happened. Because usually, hurricanes weaken as they get closer to shore. The dry air from land evaporates moisture, robbing energy from the storm. As the plane approaches Michael's eye, nothing is visible outside the cockpit windshield. Dense gray clouds blot out the sky. There's no way to tell up or down. Suddenly the nose of the plane breaks through into bright sunshine and blue sky. The hurricane's eye.

Surrounding the plane, there's a vertical wall of clouds miles high. And the C-130's crew, including Lieutenant Colonel Byron Hudges, are in awe. After doing this for almost 20 years I've probably seen this sort of presentation maybe four or five times. I mean it shows the strength of what... As the plane exits through the opposite eye wall, the loadmaster launches one of the tubes for gathering data. The plane penetrates the eye four times during the mission. The last time recorded a barometric pressure of 919 millibars, one of the lowest ever recorded for a hurricane making landfall in the U.S.

The lower the pressure, the stronger the storm. This was when the plane hit a pocket of turbulence and dropped one or two thousand feet. Passengers flew up off their seats six inches. Bags and containers went up at least a foot. The plane stabilized after flying back into the eye and that's when, looking straight down, the crew could see waves crashing into the shore. The exact moment of landfall. Back on base, Lieutenant Colonel Sean Cross said this was a first. Basically unprecedented. I don't know anybody else in the squadron that has seen that. Scientists now had data from the exact moment Hurricane Michael crashed onto the coast.

Normally, Hurricane Hunter missions end before the storm reaches shore. It was a mission as important as it was rough. I'm Tristram Corton in Miami. That story was produced thanks to a partnership between WLRN in Miami and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Finally on the Roundup, from caskets to classic rock, classical music, and even a crooner. A three-story brick building on Palmetto Street in Jacksonville, where the Florida Casket Company built its merchandise for 46 years

will be filled with life and music in the years ahead. The Jacksonville History Center is moving into the former Casket Factory, and its first floor will be dedicated to music and musicians from around the Jacksonville area. Frederick Delius was an English composer. His family sent him to the Jacksonville area in the 1880s while he was still in his 20s. He grew oranges along the St. Johns River and took piano lessons from an organist in Jacksonville. He had his first composition published while here in Florida and went on to write this, Florida Suite, after he left and moved to Germany. This is the second of the Suites four movements. It's called By the River.

Being near the water can certainly provide that musical inspiration. Crooner Pat Boone was born in Jacksonville. His grandparents called it home and he visited them frequently. This was a number one song from him back in the summer of 1957. You recognize that voice, Ray Charles. Well, he may have been born in Georgia, but he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine and moved to Jacksonville in 1945 after his mother died. There's a statue of Charles near the home he spent most of his childhood in, in Greenville, Florida. That's about two hours west of Jacksonville. A party anthem from 1994 that helped define a genre. This hip-hop style may be known as Miami Bass,

but it was the 69 Boys from Jacksonville who used it for Tootsie Roll. By the way, the song title is Jacksonville's most famous high school gym teacher. Leonard Skinner was the gym teacher. Leonard Skinner became the band. became the band. The Jacksonville History Center's music exhibit will likely open in early 2026. That's our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami

and WUSF Public Media in Tampa. Amy Sanchez produced the program with help from Polly Landis. WLRN's Vice President of Radio and our Technical Director is Peter Mayers, engineering help from Doug Peterson and Charles Michaels. Richard Ives answers the phones. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. If you missed any of today's program, you can download it and listen to past programs by visiting wlrn.org slash podcasts. Thanks for

calling, emailing, listening, and supporting public radio in your community. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend. WLRN Public Media