Florida 14th Congressional District Election Contest

Rochford v. Castor

Filed: November 27, 2024

Lawsuit filed by congressional candidate Robert Rochford (R) against his opponent Rep. Kathy Castor (D), the canvassing boards and supervisors of elections in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) challenging the results of the 2024 election for Florida’s 14th congressional district, which Rochford lost by over 57,000 votes.

In Florida, every registered voter can request a mail-in ballot. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties have voter fraud protection systems that are designed to check either a voter’s driver’s license number, Florida identification card or last four digits of a Social Security number against their registration records and flag when more than five mail-in ballot requests are to the same address.

Rochford alleges that before the 2024 election an unusually large number of voters requested mail-in ballots in these counties, including almost 200,000 ballots requested on one day alone in Pinellas County. He claims that this happened because these counties had their voter fraud protection systems “turned off or overridden” and that many of these requests did not include the information needed to verify that these requests were from registered voters. Rochford argues that the number of potentially fraudulent mail-in ballot requests exceeded Castor’s 57,000 vote margin of victory. He asks the court to order an independent investigation into Hillsborough and Pinellas counties’ mail-in ballot request processes, block the certification of the election results and order a new election.

On June 2, 2025, the court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action. On June 12, 2025 the plaintiff appealed to the First District Court of Appeals. The order being appealed grants a motion to dismiss but does not dismiss the action.

STATUS: On July 9, 2025, the trial court found for the defendants and ordered to close this case. On July 10, 2025, the plaintiffs filed an amended notice of appeal to the First District Court of Appeals. Litigation is still ongoing in the First District Court of Appeals.