In the 2020 presidential election, more Floridians than ever voted by mail. Now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to make postal voting more difficult.
At a press conference in Palm Beach on Friday, DeSantis, a Republican, announced a proposal for new voting restrictions that would make it more difficult for voters to receive and return post-in ballots in future Florida elections.
In doing so, he joined a wave of state and local officials who have worked in the months since the 2020 general election to introduce new voting restrictions, arguing that these policies will make voting safer.
In particular, DeSantis called on the Florida legislature to address “ ballot harvesting ” (when submitted ballots are collected for delivery to a delivery location) and ballots, in order to send ballots to voters who have not asked for them, and to tighten the rules for applying for a ballot so that requests must be made every election year.
Currently, a request to vote by mail is valid for two general election cycles, according to the Florida ACLU; The proposed change to DeSantis would mean that voters would have to do this more often, which could increase the logistical barriers to postal voting.
DeSantis also praised Florida’s voting system in his speech, arguing that the state had the “ most transparent and efficient elections anywhere in the country, ” pointing out that Florida – which went ahead of former President Donald Trump in November – was much faster on ballots. then counted some states. But he argued that the new measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of the election.
“We have to make sure we stay ahead,” DeSantis said Friday. “We need to make sure that our citizens have confidence in the elections.”
However, it is unclear whether his proposed changes, if enacted into law, would contribute much to those goals.
Many of the policies proposed by DeSantis are essentially already in place in his state: Florida currently does not allow the mass mailing of unsolicited ballots by mail, and the state also already has significant restrictions on the ‘collecting of ballots’, something that DeSantis admitted in his speech.
“We’re not a big ballot-harvesting state like it is,” he said. “But any type of loopholes, or any type of room where that could be abused, we want to make sure we address it.”
Trump has previously attacked the ballot harvest as “rampant with fraud,” which it is not, and the practice is a frequent Republican pet peeve. However, according to NPR, Trump himself had submitted his vote by mail in Florida in 2020 by a third party.
DeSantis also suggested on Friday that Florida may need to find ways to tighten up its existing signature contest law, which requires the signature on an absentee or vote-by-mail ballot to match the voter’s signature already on file.
“If there are to be ways to strengthen signature verification,” said DeSantis, “we should do that too.”
However, signature verification laws can be problematic: Mismatched signatures can be highly subjective, as David Graham of the Atlantic reported last year, and voters of color, among other demographics, have often rejected their ballots far more often than white voters.
“Fraud is extremely rare,” Graham emphasizes. “The much greater danger is that legitimate ballots will be thrown away.”
In general, the Florida elections in 2020 – like the elections held by all other states – went without unusual irregularities or major fraud; it is unclear how DeSantis’ proposals would improve the current system.
However, it’s clear they fit a national trend in the wake of the 2020 election cycle: After losing control of not only the presidency, but also the senate, Republicans across the country are trying to make voting more difficult.
The Republican solution to losing elections is to make voting more difficult
In the months since the presidential election, Republican lawmakers have supported Trump’s baseless rhetoric about electoral fraud and swiftly enforced new ballot restrictions.
In particular, according to a February report from the Brennan Center for Justice, “thirty-three states this year enacted, pre-submitted or transferred 165 restrictive bills (compared to 35 such bills in 15 states on Feb. 3, 2020).”
Some of those bills, such as a measure in Georgia that would end Sunday’s early vote, unabashedly target black voters, who played an important role in Democrats’ control of the senate. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explained Friday, the change would “be a blow to black churches hosting ‘Souls to the Polls’ get-out-the-vote events on Sunday,” in which parishioners are transported by church leaders to polling stations. after services.
Others, such as a Republican-backed bill in Arizona requiring all ballots to be classified by mail, would make it more difficult for anyone to cast an absentee vote.
Many of the states where Republicans impose new voter restrictions, including Arizona and Georgia, will be venues for competitive Senate races in 2022.
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly is aiming for a full six-year term by 2022 after winning a special election in 2020, as is Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, who won his seat in a special round of elections in January this year.
And Republicans will defend seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa – all three states where Republicans have moved to introduce new voter restrictions – as well as Florida, where Sen. Marco Rubio will run for re-election.
However, despite the flurry of new bills, it’s not certain that Republicans will succeed in enacting new voter restrictions. In some states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democratic governors can veto such changes.
And even in Georgia, where Republicans control both the governor’s mansion and the legislature, an anonymous Republican strategist told the Washington Post that such measures could backfire. “A lot of Republicans are still hungry for this stuff, but it’s not smart,” he said. “It just gives Democrats a baseball bat to beat us with.”
At the national level, Democrats also have their own plan to expand the right to vote and protect voters: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named after the late civil rights activist who represented a Georgia district in the House until his death last year.
According to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the bill would restore important parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – parts of which were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 – to “ protect the voting rights of all Americans. ” . “
There is also the For The People Act, which was reenacted on the first day of the new Congress in 2021. If passed, the bill would be extended early and post voting, making it easier to register to vote, and put an end to partisans. gerrymandering, among other changes.
“You know our work is far from finished,” Lewis said in 2019. “It makes me sad. I feel like crying when people are denied the right to vote. We all know this is not a Democratic or Republican issue: it is an American one. “