Florida election officials have quietly stripped Donald Trump's home address, birth date, party affiliation, mailing address and email from the state's public voter files, acting on a request in which Trump claimed protection under a privacy law that never actually mentions the presidency. The removal, processed by the Palm Beach County Office of the Supervisor of Elections, makes it harder for the public to independently verify how or whether Trump casts his ballots going forward.
The request traces back to Senate Bill 268, a measure Governor Ron DeSantis signed that took effect in July 2025 and shields the personal records of specific elected officials — including the governor, lieutenant governor, state legislators, supervisors of elections, mayors and county commissioners, among others — according to the Florida Senate's own bill analysis. As reported by Orlando Weekly, the law simply does not list the president of the United States among the protected offices, yet Trump signed a request on March 24 attesting he qualified as a sitting member of Congress or state public officer, and separately specified that being the 47th president qualified him for the secrecy. His signature was notarized by Chamberlain Harris, who did not return phone messages or emails seeking comment on the request, per the same report.
A Ministerial Process, Not a Legal Review
Palm Beach County's elections office, led by Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link, has held that the request was processed under the new law without checking Trump's actual eligibility, describing its role as purely administrative and ministerial. The office says it lacks authority to investigate asserted facts, adjudicate legal disputes, or independently determine the accuracy of sworn statements — and it has not said whether it plans to restore Trump's information to the public record, according to the same account relayed by Orlando Weekly. Link, appointed to the post by DeSantis in 2019 and since elected and re-elected, now also serves as President of the Florida Supervisors of Elections Association, according to WLRN.
That ministerial standard matters because standard Florida exemption forms require a notarized attestation under penalty of perjury identifying the exact statutory clause that qualifies an applicant for protection, per the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's model exemption form. Under Florida Statute 837.06, knowingly making a false written statement to mislead a public servant performing official duties is a second-degree misdemeanor, according to the Florida Legislature's own statutory text. Florida Senate Jason Brodeur said the legislature simply forgot to add the U.S. president as a protected elected office, calling the omission probably an accident, Orlando Weekly reports.
Why Lawmakers May Have Missed the Presidency
Brodeur said he supports shielding Trump's personal information from public disclosure, arguing that a U.S. president who has faced multiple attempts on his life should be exempt. Trump has faced three major assassination attempts since 2024: a gunman in Pennsylvania in July 2024 who killed a rally attendee before Secret Service fatally shot the shooter; a gunman found hiding with a rifle at Trump International Golf Club in South Florida in September 2024; and a gunman who fired at officers outside the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington in April, per the same report. Florida lawmakers could still amend the statute to add the presidency when they convene in Tallahassee next March, since the exemption's text currently omits the word entirely.
Voter registration data in Florida is public by default under Florida Statute 97.0585 and Chapter 119 unless a specific exemption applies, a framework that normally exposes full home addresses, birth dates, party affiliation and vote-by-mail history for any registered voter, according to the Lee County Supervisor of Elections. That broad transparency is also how Hoodline previously caught Trump voting by mail in a local special state House election in Palm Beach County despite his long record of attacking mail-in voting. Florida voter files record only whether someone casts a ballot in person or by mail, not who they voted for, and records show Trump has voted by mail at least seven times in Florida across the last 12 elections since 2020, even as he has urged Republicans to vote early and by mail, per Orlando Weekly's report.
Security Concerns Have Real Precedent in Florida
The push for privacy exemptions isn't without basis. In October 2020, thousands of registered Democrats across Florida received threatening voter-intimidation emails built from personal contact information harvested out of the state's publicly accessible voter rolls, according to WFSU News. That same year, someone changed Governor Ron DeSantis's registered voting address on the state's online portal, according to WJCT News.
Trump's removal wasn't an isolated case. Florida election officials had already shielded personal voter information for 10 members of the state's congressional delegation under the same exemption framework, including U.S. Representatives Byron Donalds, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Maria Elvira Salazar, Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Randy Fine, Laurel Lee, William Steube and Lois Frankel, according to the Orlando Weekly report. Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia is also absent from the most current state voter registration records, while the governor, lieutenant governor and agriculture commissioner all remain listed in public voter files.
How the Removal Came to Light
Trump's information disappeared from the public record sometime after August, with the Palm Beach County elections office removing his voter records over the summer without any public notice, per Orlando Weekly. The gap was discovered when a University of Florida journalism professor assigned students in a public records class to look up Trump's Florida voter records as part of coursework. His family members still remain listed in Florida's voter registration records, the outlet reports. The White House did not answer questions about Trump's request, according to the same account.
The episode lands as Florida election administration faces renewed scrutiny more broadly, from tight statewide polling and registration gaps between the parties to thousands of former felons filing paperwork just to learn whether they're eligible to vote. Whether Palm Beach County restores Trump's public voter file, or whether the Legislature instead rewrites the statute to formally cover the presidency when it reconvenes in March, remains an open question that neither the county elections office nor the White House has answered.
