Florida Hid Trump's Voter Record Under a Privacy Law That Doesn't Cover Presidents

Election officials in Palm Beach County removed President Donald Trump's personal information from Florida's public voter registration records after Trump invoked a new state privacy law that does not list the presidency among the offices it protects, according to an investigation by Fresh Take Florida, the student news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, published by WLRN on Tuesday, Oct. 6.

The change shields Trump's home and mailing addresses, birth date, party affiliation and email address from public disclosure, and it makes it harder to see whether Trump, whose legal residence is his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, casts his ballot by mail or in person. The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office said it approved the request without checking whether the president was eligible, describing its role as administrative.

The episode matters well beyond one famous voter. Florida's voter rolls are among the most open in the country, and the case exposes how a sworn request can quietly take a record out of public view with no one verifying the claim behind it.

What Trump signed

According to Fresh Take Florida, Trump signed the request on March 24, 2026, and attested on the notarized form that he was eligible to keep his voter information private as a current member of Congress or state public officer under the new law. On the form, he specified that what qualified him was being the "47th president of the United States."

The form was notarized by Chamberlain Harris, a longtime Trump aide whom he promoted last year to deputy director of Oval Office operations, the news service reported. Trump's information disappeared from the state voter files sometime after August, according to Fresh Take Florida's review of each month's voter updates. The White House did not answer questions about the request, and Harris did not return messages, the outlet reported.

The law, and who it actually covers

The protection Trump cited comes from a 2025 law that began as Senate Bill 268, titled "Public Records/Congressional Members and Public Officers." It was sponsored by Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, with Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary, as co-introducer. The bill passed the Senate 34 to 2 and the House 113 to 2, and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved it on June 27, 2025. It took effect July 1, 2025, as Chapter 2025-195, Laws of Florida, and is scheduled to expire on Oct. 2, 2030, unless the Legislature renews it.

According to the Senate's bill summary, the law exempts from public records disclosure the partial home addresses and telephone numbers of current members of Congress and certain public officers, along with those of their spouses and adult children, plus the names, home addresses, phone numbers and birth dates of their minor children and the schools or day care centers those children attend. Once a person qualifies for that kind of exemption, Florida election law lets them ask supervisors of elections to shield additional voter registration details.

The offices the law covers are spelled out. Fresh Take Florida reported that besides members of Congress, the protected list includes only the following:

• Governor and lieutenant governor
• Chief financial officer, attorney general and agriculture commissioner
• State representatives and state senators
• Property appraisers and supervisors of elections
• School superintendents and school board members
• Mayors, city commissioners and county commissioners

Neither the bill nor its accompanying legislative analysis mentions the word "president," the news service found.

Author says leaving out the president was an accident

Brodeur told Fresh Take Florida that lawmakers forgot to include the U.S. president. "My guess is, it was an accident," he said. He added that he supports shielding Trump's information, pointing to the threats the president has faced.

"We know people are crazy and that if we're going to exempt the personal information of those who work in criminal justice, of judges, of prosecutors, certainly a U.S. president who's had attempts on his life multiple times should be exempt as well," Brodeur said.

Trump has faced three major assassination attempts since 2024, including the September 2024 incident in which a gunman was found hiding with a rifle in the shrubbery at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Lawmakers cannot amend the statute to add the presidency until they return to Tallahassee for the regular session that begins in March 2027.

When SB 268 was moving through committees in early 2025, its sponsors framed it as a safety measure after lawmakers reported threats and people showing up at their homes. Brodeur told a committee the goal was to "ensure that our public officials are safe," according to the Florida Trident, as reported by WGCU. Not everyone was persuaded. Ben Wilcox of the watchdog group Integrity Florida questioned the rationale at the time, saying, "Given the internet, you can find someone's address very easily."

Elections office: no power to second-guess sworn statements

The Palm Beach County elections office is run by Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link, a Democrat who has held the job since 2019 and is president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections Association. In a statement Tuesday, her office said it processed Trump's request under the new law without checking whether the president might qualify, and described its role in such requests as "only administrative and ministerial."

The office "does not have the authority to investigate asserted facts, adjudicate legal disputes or make independent legal determinations regarding the accuracy of statements made under oath within a submission," the statement said, according to Fresh Take Florida. The office did not immediately say whether it would restore Trump's information to the public files.

How a classroom quiz uncovered it

The removal came to light because a UF journalism professor assigned students in a public records class to look up Trump's Florida voter record as part of a quiz last week. Students reported they could not find it. The Palm Beach County office had removed the information over the summer without any public notice, the news service reported.

The voter records of other Trump family members remain public, including those of first lady Melania Trump, Barron Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Tiffany Trump and Lara Trump, according to Fresh Take Florida.

Others have used the law, too. Information for Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia no longer appears in the current state files, while records for the governor, lieutenant governor and agriculture commissioner had not been removed, because the law requires each official to formally ask. Election officials have shielded voter information for 10 members of Florida's congressional delegation, the outlet reported: Reps. Jimmy Patronis, John Rutherford, Randy Fine, Anna Paulina Luna, Laurel Lee, Greg Steube, Byron Donalds, Brian Mast, Lois Frankel and Maria Elvira Salazar.

Why it matters in Florida

Florida's public records tradition is written into the state constitution, and the Legislature has to pass each exemption separately. Over time the list of people who can hide their addresses has grown long. Before the 2025 law, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, tax collectors, child abuse investigators, law enforcement officers, firefighters, domestic violence victims and others could already shield their information. The 2025 law widened that circle to elected officials themselves.

In practical terms, hiding Trump's address, birth date and party changes little. His permanent residence is widely known to be Mar-a-Lago, and he celebrated his 80th birthday on June 14. The more meaningful loss is in how Trump votes. Florida voter files record the method a voter uses in each election, though not whom they vote for.

That detail has drawn attention because Trump has called mail ballots corrupt and has pushed to restrict them through executive action and proposed federal legislation. According to state voter records reviewed by Fresh Take Florida, Trump has voted by mail in Florida at least seven times in the last 12 elections since 2020, including the August 2026 primary. Over the weekend, heading into midterm elections, Trump urged Republicans to vote early and by mail, the outlet reported.

The case also highlights a gap in how such requests are handled. Supervisors of elections across Florida's 67 counties process these exemption forms on the strength of a sworn statement. As the Palm Beach office described it, the system relies on the person signing the form to tell the truth, and the office has no mechanism to check.

What's next

The immediate questions are whether Link's office will restore the public record, whether the White House will respond to questions about the attestation, and whether anyone challenges the request. Brodeur's comments suggest legislative leaders could move to add the presidency to the list when the 2027 session opens in March. Such a fix would cover the president going forward, but by itself it would not change how county offices verify the sworn statements on future requests.

For now, Florida voters looking up the president of the United States in their state's public voter file, as UF's journalism students tried to do, will not find him.