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Article
Courtesy of Channel 4 JAX News
By
Ashley Harding
Published March 24, 2021
TALLAHASSEE – Florida Republicans continued their drive
Monday to rewrite the state’s vote-by-mail system, despite acknowledging
that the state’s presidential contest last fall was a national model.
The push could possibly undo recent advances by Democrats in absentee
balloting -- by adding new requirements that critics say could make it more
difficult for some to cast a ballot.
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The proposal before a
House committee was immediately decried by Democrats and
voting rights advocates. They said adding new layers of
inconvenience could make voting more troublesome and add
financial and staffing burdens for elections officials
around Florida, a state once ridiculed for its 2000
presidential recount fiasco.
Among other issues, the bill targets “ballot harvesting,”
saying candidates or committees would not be able to take
your mail-in ballot and drop it off for you at any drop-off
site.
The bill says only a family member or someone who lives in
your home could drop it off.
The measure, advanced along party lines on Monday by the
House Public Integrity and Elections Committee, would also
require 24-hour monitoring of ballot drop boxes -- either by
guards, elections officials during work hours or by
surveillance cameras during off-hours. And would require
voters to provide identification to submit a ballot at a
dropbox, which critics say could cause long lines at
drop-off sites and make them inconvenient.
Critics said the moves could also
complicate the process of updating registration information
by requiring voters to submit an identification number, such
as partial Social Security numbers. |
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An election worker places a vote-by-mail ballot into
an official ballot drop box outside of an early voting site, Monday,
Oct. 19, 2020, in Miami.
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Especially troublesome for elections officers and voter
rights advocates is a push to require signatures on absentee
ballots be matched only with the most recent signature on
file, and exclude any previous signatures that might capture
some of the variances in how people sign their names.
Critics said that could lead to a spike in rejected ballots
because of partisan-tinged scrutiny.
As trouble erupted in ballot counting in other states during
the presidential election, Florida officials, including Gov.
Ron DeSantis, hailed their state’s relatively trouble-free
balloting as"the gold standard."
Nonetheless, Florida lawmakers soon began looking into
changes into voting by mail, which was once dominated by
Republicans but emerged last year as a growing strength for
Democrats.
The Senate is considering its own changes to how
vote-by-mail ballots are handled, including the banning of
drop boxes.
Both versions would also narrow the time period covered by a
single application for an absentee ballot from two general
elections cycles to just one. The Senate’s version would
wipe out the advantage Democrats now have over Republicans
in the number of absentee voters, but the House version
would retain applications already in place.
The group representing Florida’s 67 county election
supervisors said it supported safe and secure elections, but
expressed concern about the proposals.
"Calling for unnecessary election reforms doesn’t just
endanger our ability to conduct elections efficiently and
effectively. It also risks destroying the voter confidence
that we have worked so hard to earn,`` the group said in a
letter released Monday.
"Florida’s Supervisors of Elections feel strongly that we
must be advocates for our voters,`` the letter said. ``It’s
our intention that all eligible voters have convenient and
ample opportunities to vote, and that the elections in which
they cast their ballots are safe and secure.``
Some 4.8 million Floridians voted by mail in November,
accounting for about 44% of the 11 million votes cast.
Despite concerns over potential ballot fraud, Republicans
have not been able to produce any substantive examples of
widespread abuse in Florida and instead have raised concerns
about problems in other states.
"Why all of these changes?’' Rep. Susan Valdez, a Democrat,
asked during Monday’s hearing. "Was there anything around
the state of Florida that prompted this to come up? Help me
understand.’'
The bill’s lead sponsor replied that there were indeed
problems, although he did not give specifics.
"There are other problems that happened in other states that
we recognized," said Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican. "We
should never have to wait for a problem to occur to head off
that problem.’'
For years, Republicans have dominated vote by mail in
Florida, but Democrats worried that the pandemic would keep
voters from casting ballots on Election Day. So they pushed
hard to get Democratic voters to apply for absentee ballots
that they could put in the mail or deliver drop into special
collection boxes. Many of those boxes were outside elections
offices and other government buildings.
In November, Florida Democrats outvoted Republicans by mail
by 680,000 more mail ballots. While then-President Donald
Trump won the state by 3%, the state’s long history of close
elections has led to heated jockeying for any advantage at
the ballot box.
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