Six months after a record-breaking 11.1 million Floridians voted in well-run, widely praised election, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation Thursday that will make it harder for some people to vote in future elections.
He touted the law as a fraud-fighting measure — even though neither he nor other supporters came up with any examples of fraud from recent Florida elections that needed any remedies.
DeSantis signed the measure into law at political rally in West Palm Beach, arranged so he could take the action during the Fox News Channel morning show “Fox & Friends.” Hundreds of DeSantis supporters attended the event. Florida news reporters and photographers were excluded.
Two federal lawsuits were immediately filed challenging the new law. One was from the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, one of the nation’s oldest and respected racial justice and voting rights advocacy organizations.
The new law increases restrictions on drop boxes, makes mail-ballot requests expire more quickly, and implements new procedures for processing and counting mail ballots. It would prohibit anyone from possessing or returning more than two mail ballots in any election unless they’re from family members, a provision aimed at ending so-called ballot harvesting.
“We think this will make it even better as we go forward, so we’re proud of the strides that we’ve made,” DeSantis said. “We’re not resting on our laurels, and me signing this bill here says Florida your vote counts. Your vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency.”
The legislation wasn’t as restrictive as Republicans originally proposed.
County supervisors of elections, the locally elected officials who conduct voting throughout the state, opposed the bulk of the changes as mostly unnecessary and, in some cases, counterproductive.
“It’s going to make it harder for people to vote,” said Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott. Scott, who is Black, said it amounts to voter suppression.
Democrats, like Scott, and many independent election experts, see the changes as a political maneuver aimed at satisfying the desires of Republican Party voters. The collateral damage, they said, are people who would find it less convenient to cast their ballots.
Sean Foreman, a Barry University political scientist, also rejected the notion that the law was aimed at fixing anything.
“DeSantis touted how successful the Florida elections were run in November. The day after the election, DeSantis said other states should follow Florida’s model. So why are we changing Florida’s model?"
But state Rep. Mike Caruso, a Palm Beach County Republican who was one of five state legislators who attended the event, said the law was not voter suppression. He acknowledged that the 2020 election was “great” in Florida. “We’re doing things that are proactive in Florida,” Caruso said. “We don’t want to have issues in the future.”
Tami Donnally, vice chairwoman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party and a past candidate for the Florida Legislature, said the new law is critically needed. “I believe that there has been fraud in elections in the past — local elections, national elections — over the years and I think we need to get a handle on it,” she said. “We need to have this election law make sure every legal vote is counted.”
Democratic elected officials and party leaders condemned the law — and what they said were the motivations for it.
“Governor DeSantis paid homage to Donald Trump by signing Florida’s new election law disguised as a response to false claims by Republicans that November’s election was rigged,” U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, who represents West Palm Beach, said in a statement. “In reality, this is part of a nationwide effort by Republicans to suppress the votes of Black Americans.”
Scott said people who have more trouble voting — who may have tough work shifts or don’t have good transportation — could find it more difficult to cast their ballots under the new Florida law.
For example, Scott said the requirement that drop boxes at supervisors of elections offices have in-person monitors whenever they’re in operation will either force a big increase in cost to pay teams to watch the boxes 24 hours a day or curtail the service. They used to be monitored by video, and there were no problems, Scott said.
And, Scott, said the restrictions that prevent someone from possessing and returning the mail ballots of more than two people could mean that someone helping a neighbor unknowingly commits a new felony. Or it may result in people who know about the new law declining to help friends and neighbors, meaning some people will never actually cast their ballots.
“The new law has limits that are unreasonable and extremely confusing and that confusion will, in effect, lead to voter suppression,” Scott said. “It’s easy to see how these things will happen. Either way it’s bad. Either way it’s senseless. It’s totally senseless because there is no fraud happening.”
The elections supervisor said some provisions in the new law are good ideas, such as requiring additional identification to prevent someone from attempting to make unauthorized changes in people’s voter registrations.
Writing on Twitter, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the provision limiting the number of ballots any one person can possess is a reform that “makes it more difficult for political organizations to go out & collect thousands of ballots.”
Caruso said the law wouldn’t suppress votes. Additional scrutiny of mail ballot signatures and increased monitoring of vote-by-mail drop boxes only serve to make elections more secure, he said.
Besides the NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawsuit, a coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups and public interest groups — the League of Women Voters of Florida, Black Voters Matter Fund and Florida Alliance for Retired Americans — filed a lawsuit charging the law amounted to voter suppression and violates the Constitution.
Democrats condemned both the substance of the legislation and the fact that DeSantis signed it on Fox News at a political rally.
“The bill signing of a voter suppression bill by our Governor is a “Fox Exclusive” — when did public policy become an exclusive to any media company, let alone a hyper conservative one?! This is how fascism works y’all — & if you’re proud about the bill let ppl see you sign it!” state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, wrote on Twitter. She had been considering a run for the 2022 Democratic nomination for governor, but said Thursday she would run for reelection.
Before Fox went live, reporters outside the event space at the Airport Hilton in West Palm Beach could hear DeSantis revving up the crowd, though it wasn’t possible to hear what he was saying. Hundreds of people were on their feet, cheering and applauding, then chanted “four more years!”
Afterward, dozens of supporters crowded around DeSantis to get selfies. One man proudly showed off his cap, which the governor had just signed.
DeSantis left quickly, without talking to Florida reporters. On the way to his SUV, DeSantis rejected criticism of the way the signing rally was conducted. “It was on national TV. It wasn’t a secret.”
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(Sun Sentinel staff writers Joe Cavaretta and David Fleshler and Orlando Sentinel staff writer Gray Rohrer contributed to this report.)
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