Why do we need notaries?

The public generally views notaries as a seemingly unimportant inconvenience. To them, all notaries do is match signatures to IDs. They don't care about the notarial act or proper notarial procedures; they just want "the stamp" so they can "legalize" their document and go about their business.

Unfortunately, many notaries themselves also view their public office in this same light. Many notaries who become commissioned for their jobs chose to "get their notary" or "get their stamp" so they could "seal the deal" and get the job done, whether it meant notarizing without the signer present, backdating, overlooking lack of identification, and so on. Yes, these are the notaries who don't complete the venue, don't administer an oath, don't use an embosser, don't print their name under their signature, combine oaths and acknowledgments in the same certificate, and certainly can't be bothered with keeping a notary journal, a tradition which goes back hundreds and hundreds of years to Roman times.

These notaries are the ones who have brought the overall standard of the office of notary public down. A hundred years ago, notaries were publicly perceived as being of valuable service to the public. The reason we still need notaries today is the same reason we needed them a hundred years ago.

The government can not be everywhere at once. The public does not have easy access to a judge to authenticate their documents. Without notaries, people would have to take time off of work, travel to a courthouse, very likely wait long amounts of time, and have a judge formally take the person's acknowledgment of execution of a deed or other document. Were that the case, the public would be begging the government to appoint local officials to assist them in their everyday transactions. Hence, the appointment of the first notaries public nearly 200 years ago in the State of Florida.

A good way to look at notaries is to view them as state officers whom the governor appoints and sends out into the community to assist the citizens in transforming their private transactions and documents into public transactions and documents, thus allowing their documents to be recorded, accepted by government agencies, and accepted by the court. Notaries, in their capacity as state officers, serve as state witnesses to ensure that no document is signed under duress and that signers of documents have full understanding of the documents content's, and, if necessary, that the signers have sworn to the document's contents.

In recent years, the purpose of notaries has increased to include a deterrent to identity fraud. Thus, notaries began to check identification and make sure that the signer of the document is the person they claim to be. Without these important public officials, public records would be unreliable and inconsistent, and forgery and other fraud would be rampant.

This is not to say that the current system for appointing notaries is perfect. To the contrary, the government's system of approving all notary applicants with very limited education, regardless of their career background, has made the very important notarial acts of taking acknowledgments and administering oaths fade into the background, as the public only wants "their notary stamp" and doesn't care whether the notary administers an actual oath or takes an actual acknowledgment. Perhaps bringing the office of Notary Public "back to basics" would raise the standard of the office and would increase public awareness of the very important duties with which notaries public have been entrusted by the state.

The world still needs notaries. We daily prevent fraudulent power of attorneys from being obtained over incompetent seniors. We daily prevent fraudulent transfer of real and personal property. We daily enforce justice by subjecting those who lie under oath to criminal punishment. We daily prevent identity fraud by verifying capacity to execute documents. We do not simply "verify signatures", nor do we "witness signatures", "verify identification", and we certainly do not just simply "stamp things". Notaries public have a long history of serving the people of Florida; and although the people of Florida may not realize just how vital notaries are, we do serve as public officers of the state who do our very best to ensure that no transaction is made fraudulently.