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The Florida Democratic Party strongly encourages candidates to qualify for the ballot by petition because securing your place by petition:
1️⃣ Encourages voter contact early on in your campaign.
2️⃣ Keeps volunteers engaged long before election day.
Fun fact: when an inactive voter signs a candidate petition, they are reactivated! Watch our Qualifying by Petition training for a breakdown of the process for 2024.
Candidates are encouraged to begin collecting petitions as soon as possible!
- Before beginning the petition process read through the Candidate Petition Handbook, this will guide you through the qualifying by petition process as well as provide you with the amount of petitions needed to qualify for your specific office.
- Pre-Fill your petitions with your name and the office you are running for (including seat or district number). This helps to reduce the amount of potentially ineligible petitions!
- You can use our FDP Petition Template, which includes space to collect emails, phone numbers, and potential volunteers!
- If you are having trouble using the template, use this guide for instructions.
- You can also use the generic petition template provided by the DOS.
- Create a campaign budget and build in petition collecting. While your costs may be lower, a safe estimate is that it will cost your campaign about $1 per petition. Common petition related expenses include:
- Paper and ink
- Pens and clipboards
- Water and pizza for your volunteers
- Paid petition canvassers (make sure you’re paying them living wages since we’re Democrats after all!)
- Entrance to community events
- Processing fees to Supervisors of Elections (10 cents per petition)
- Postage for mailing petitions
It is important to keep track of your petitions and to note that some petitions will be thrown out and not counted towards your total by the Supervisor of Elections because they do not meet the requirements for valid petitions.
To reduce the number of invalid petitions, check that each petition meets the following requirements before turning them in to the SOE:
✅ The voter lives in the district where you’re running.
✅ The voter has not completed a duplicate petition.
✅ The writing is legible.
✅ The voter registration information is accurate, matching the voter’s current address.
✅ The petition is entirely filled in with no blank fields. The voter must fill in the signature and date themselves.
<aside> 📈 Because invalid petitions will not be counted towards your total, candidates should calculate a safety margin of 25% more petitions than required.
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To calculate your petition goal, track progress, and verify petitions are likely to be valid use our Petition Tracker Template:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1attKOcPl4oRIO2csyoirIqxvsx4_c2Gv9GI4EzTpIrs/edit?usp=sharing
Petitions must be submitted to the Supervisor of Elections for the voters county, ex. If the voter lives in Alachua County the petition must be submitted to the Alachua County SOE.
- For petition deadlines please view our Qualifying by Petition guide.
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Once you have submitted your petitions, you are not done with the qualifying process! Candidates are required to submit the necessary qualifying documents to complete the process of qualifying for the ballot.
- To learn more about the qualifying process for Non-Federal Candidates check out Non-Federal Candidates: Qualifying for the Ballot
- To learn more about the qualifying process for Federal Candidates check out Federal Candidates: Qualifying for the Ballot </aside>
To learn more about qualifying by petition view the guide below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VxWnQHg22mHuADF6_K_pSRaoXmQBjkgR/view?usp=share_link
You can learn more about qualifying by petition in this handbook by the Florida Division of Elections:
2024 Candidate Petition Handbook.pdf
🎥 Qualifying by Petition Training (Recording):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DVEPmMzN0fS9Hc0aVMrO3BvpaoQE2dop/view?usp=drive_link