Duval elections panel hears Supervisor of Elections update on student registration, state bills and website plan

Robert Phillips, Supervisor of Elections for Duval County, told the Elections Advisory Panel on June 18 that his office has registered “over 1,500 high school students” in a countywide voter-registration effort and is tracking several state bills that could change how the office runs elections.

The registration push is organized as a competition among schools and is broken into categories by school size, Phillips said. “Yesterday we were at Bishop Kenny … we had 287 or something like that, pretty much every junior in their class,” he said, describing classroom-by-classroom visits as the most effective method.

The update covered three recurring themes: (1) the student-registration drive and routine list maintenance, (2) legislation under review at the state level, and (3) plans to replace the county’s web host.

Phillips said the county’s registration work continues outside of election years and that monthly list maintenance is ongoing. “Anyone who probably was inactive that would have been moved to ineligible would have been swept up right after the November election,” he said, adding that off-year activity is mainly “people moving in and out of the county, people updating their address, people dying, new registrations.”

On legislation, Phillips described a range of bills being tracked by the state division of elections. He identified Senate Bill 1414 and House Bill 1381 as lengthy proposals the state division supports — “the house bill is 63 pages long and the senate bill is 83 pages long,” he said — and noted a separate measure, Senate Bill 1170, that would explicitly allow photography in polling locations before and after voting is open. Phillips said the photography bill was deferred and did not have broad support among supervisors. He also summarized provisions attributed to SB 1414 in its current drafting, saying it “really scales down the number of voter IDs that are allowed and would remove like student IDs,” and that some proposals would reduce early voting days and centralize secure ballot intake to the Supervisor of Elections’ main office.

Phillips repeatedly framed these as draft proposals: “These bills … have just been introduced, so I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of amendments,” he said, and stressed that the office will comply if a measure becomes law. He also said some measures being discussed at the state level — for example, rules about petition handling and transport requirements — could increase the time and cost burden on individual supervisors should they become law.

Panel members asked for clarification about who is sponsoring or supporting particular bills. Phillips identified Representative Anthony Sabatini/Representative Ingoglia by name when asked about sponsors (transcript reference: “Ingoglia”), and said the state division’s support tends to increase a bill’s prospects because the division is a representative of the governor’s office.

On technology and staffing, Phillips said VR Systems will no longer host the county’s voter-registration website and that the office is drafting a request for proposals to move hosting and redesign work. He said funding for the web work has already been budgeted but added that the exact dollar amount is “not specified.” He projected the new site could be live by the end of the calendar year.

Phillips also said this meeting was his last as a full-time employee; the ordinance requires the Supervisor of Elections to be a full-time employee, he noted, and he said Deputy Supervisor Justin Giocalone will fill his seat for future meetings. Panel members offered congratulations and thanks to Phillips for his service.

On procedural items, the panel accepted the December minutes by voice vote and later approved a motion to place the office’s end-of-year report on the next meeting agenda. Both votes were voice votes recorded as “ayes”; the transcript does not record a roll-call tally.

The panel set its next regular meeting for June 18, 2025.

Why it matters: The items Phillips discussed — voter-registration outreach, proposed state-level changes to identification and early voting rules, and the county’s website hosting — affect how Duval County manages voter access and election operations. Several of the legislative proposals he described would change administrative practice only if they become law; Phillips emphasized the office is tracking them but will not implement changes until statutory language is final.

Notes: Quotes and operational details are taken from the panel’s spoken update. Where numeric amounts or specific sponsor support were not given in the meeting, the text notes “not specified.”