Why Are Voter Applications Suspended?

Suspending a voter registration application removes it from the normal flow of processing and places it in the Suspense Queue of another Supervisor of Elections, the Department of State, or your own county's Suspense Queue. An application can be suspended whether it is from a new voter or contains an update of information for an existing voter.

Suspending the application of an existing voter does not affect their registration status. If the voter was Active or Inactive before the application was suspended, they will remain Active or Inactive while their applications is being processed.

Your county can suspend an application to:

Your county—You can suspend an application to your own county if the applicant resides in your county and they provided an invalid residential address. An address is considered invalid when you are unable to process it successfully against the database Street table—that is, when Voter Focus won’t accept the address you enter into the voter application form. Suspending the application to your own county gives you the opportunity to conduct further research on the address or to contact the applicant for verification of what they provided on the application.

Note  Suspension of an application whose address is invalid is not required. You could instead process the application as Incomplete, which will schedule an Incomplete Registration Notice for the voter. However, some counties prefer to suspend the application while the address undergoes further research, perhaps by their GIS staff. If the research indicates the address is truly invalid, the application can then be processed as Incomplete.

Another county—All new applications taken for a county other than your own must be suspended to the applicant’s resident county. This gives the resident county the discretion to deny the application or give it special handling because the applicant is known to election officials there.

All out-of-county applications containing a change to the voter's party must be suspended to the resident county.

You should also suspend the application to the resident county if a voter's out-of-county address cannot be validated by FVRS.

The Department of State—If an application does not indicate the applicant’s county and you cannot validate the address locally, you can suspend the application to the Florida Department of State. However, do so only as a last resort, because the State’s resources for validating street addresses are limited.

Applications can be suspended to your county by:

HSMV—Most suspended applications originate with HSMV. Suspensions occur as the nightly batch of applications from HSMV is processed through FVRS. Applications are suspended to the resident county if they appear to be from new voters (that is, no record exists in FVRS). Applications suspended by HSMV are data only, because paper application forms are not provided at Driver License offices.

Note  Changes to existing voter records where the driver license or social security number has been verified will not result in a suspended application. Such changes are automatically applied to the voter record with no action required on the resident county’s part.

Another county—New applications and party changes received by another county from a voter in your county must be suspended to your county. Changes to existing applications might be suspended to your county because the other county could not verify the address. The other county is required to scan and mail a paper application to your county within 48 hours of receiving it. Applications suspended by another county are transmitted through FVRS to the resident county immediately.

The Department of State— Applications accepted at DOS offices are handled in the same way as applications received by another county (above). The DOS might also resuspend to your county an application originally suspended to them by another county.

VR Tower Customers Only - Address Change Service — Address change requests submitted through the Address Change Service on your VR Tower website are automatically suspended until they are reviewed and processed.  

When you suspend an application, FVRS gives it the status Suspended and assigns it a suspense ID for tracking purposes. The appropriate county or the Department of State will be notified of the suspended application and the suspended-to agency will be responsible for processing the application from that point. The Voter ID field on the voter application form is orange while an application’s status is Suspended.

Applications suspended to your county are listed in the Suspense Queue. You can see the Suspense Queue by going to VOTER REGISTRATION > Suspense Queue. Once you have obtained the information necessary to complete the application, you can access it from the Suspense Queue and process the application.