TALLAHASSEE — During a nationally televised event hosted by a fan club of former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law contentious and wide-ranging changes to the state’s voting system, including provisions targeting voting by mail and limiting the use of ballot drop boxes.
Highlighting the sharply partisan debate surrounding Senate Bill 90, passed by state lawmakers last week, DeSantis barred Florida reporters from attending the event held in West Palm Beach before the group Club 45 USA. Fox News was granted exclusive access.
![Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a voting bill in West Palm Beach while appearing on Fox and Friends. The event was closed to Florida reporters.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"%20viewBox="0%200%201920%201080"/%3E "Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a voting bill in West Palm Beach while appearing on Fox and Friends. The event was closed to Florida reporters.")
“We’re not resting on our laurels and me signing this bill here says, ‘Florida your vote counts,’” DeSantis told the hosts of Fox & Friends, with cheering supporters and lawmakers behind him. “Your vote is going to be passed with integrity and transparency.”
The announcement was quickly condemned by Democrats, and multiple voting rights groups announced they were filing lawsuits against the state on the grounds the new law was unconstitutional.
“This morning’s showboat for-FOX News-only bill signing effectively clenched Republicans’ grip on our state’s election system, enacting oppressive measures to restrict voter access and empower partisan poll watchers,” said Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, D-Plantation.
Senate Bill 90, passed by the Legislature along party lines last week, makes dozens of changes to the state’s voting laws.
Most of the changes are administrative, but elections supervisors warned last week that the bill makes it harder to request and return vote by mail ballots:
- Floridians now have to give a driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to request a vote by mail ballot.
- Requests for mail ballots also don’t last as long. Instead of requesting a ballot through the next two general elections — the next four years — requests are limited to the next general election — or two years. (Current requests are grandfathered in.)
- Drop boxes are limited to early voting hours, unless it’s a drop box at the supervisor’s office, and the boxes must be manned while in use.
Speaking on behalf the organization that represents the elections supervisors for Florida’s 67 counties, Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer said last week the call for elections reform was “unnecessary” considering the state’s success in the 2020 election.
Florida was spared contentious recounts and allegations of widespread voter fraud levied by Trump last year.
“Elections ran smoothly, voters participated in record numbers, and election results were verified with audits in every county in Florida,” Latimer said in a statement last week.
Senate Bill 90′s course through the last two months of the legislative session was hotly debated, with Democrats accusing Republicans of trying to suppress the vote and appeasing Trump’s unfounded accusations of fraud.
After Georgia lawmakers faced a backlash by corporations and Major League Baseball, Florida Republicans heavily watered down their own bill. They abandoned up on proposals to ban the use of drop boxes and impose strict signature-matching requirements that could have caused millions of Floridians to update their signatures on file with their county elections office.
Republican lawmakers said they were trying to tighten up the state’s vote-by-mail laws by cracking down on fraud.
DeSantis on Thursday highlighted one provision in the bill, which bans anyone from possessing more than two ballots, other than those belonging to family members. That’s been illegal in Miami-Dade County for years, an effort to stop “ballot harvesting,” which involves candidates and operatives collecting ballots at voters’ homes, and in many cases, illegally pressuring voters.
“We’re not going to let political operatives go and get satchels of votes and dump them in some drop box,” DeSantis said.
While the state has a long history of vote by mail fraud in local races, Republicans removed the ban on ballot harvesting in 2001. A 2012 statewide grand jury urged lawmakers to ban it again, but lawmakers have taken no action on the topic until this year.
Just how many people could be prevented from voting under the law is not clear, however.
Data from county supervisors collected by All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan voting rights group, does not show whether minority voters tended to use drop boxes more than other groups.
It’s also not clear how many Floridians would be prohibited from requesting vote by mail ballots because they don’t have a driver’s license, state ID or a Social Security number, although Brad Ashwell, All Voting is Local’s Florida state director, said such laws have a history of affecting minority voters.
“Study after study have shown they have a disproportionate impact on Black voters and other minority voters,” Ashwell said.
Moments after DeSantis signed the bill, the League of Women Voters and other groups said they filed a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Laurel Lee and county elections supervisors alleging the bill violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The complaint, echoing concerns by Democrats, said the bill “appears to ban anyone except election workers from giving food or drink, including water, to voters waiting in line to vote.”
The bill does not explicitly prohibit anyone from giving water, food or other non-electioneering-related items to voters waiting in line. Soliciting voters within 150 feet of a polling place was already illegal under state law.
Rather, the bill clarifies the definition of “solicitation” to include “engaging in any activity with the intent to influence or effect of influencing a voter.” And it extends the “no-solicitation zone” to the 150 feet around ballot drop boxes.
Elections supervisors were opposed to the bill the session primarily on the numerous changes to how votes by mail are received, counted and challenged.
Supervisors will have to allow candidates’ observers to closely watch, and easily dispute, the duplicate ballot process. That’s the process where supervisors duplicate ballots that are wet, wrinkled or otherwise too damaged to run through voting machines.
Supervisors also asked for the ability to use video surveillance to monitor drop boxes, instead of relying on staffers, and they also objected to lawmakers imposing a $25,000 fine for leaving drop boxes unattended during early voting hours.
Joe Scott, the Broward County supervisor of elections who took office in January, called the legislation “terrible” in an interview Wednesday.
“The new law has limitations that are unreasonable and extremely confusing,” Scott said. “That confusion in effect will lead to voter suppression. Many voters who don’t understand the rules will decide not to participate at all.”
Miami Herald reporter Aaron Leibowitz and Times/Herald reporter Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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