What’s in Florida’s proposed voting integrity bill& will it come to a final vote?
Bottom Line: Last week when Joe Biden was scoring “Pinocchio's” from the Washington Post’s fact checkers for lying about Georgia’s new voter laws, and supporting boycotts based on those falsehoods, I mentioned that the attention could soon turn to Florida. That’s because we’re one of many other states looking at improving upon what Harvard’s Election Integrity Project has found to be the2nd worst in the developed world. That includes Florida’s current score of a 75 out of 100.Governor DeSantis indicated in his state-of-the-state address election integrity would be a priority for Florida in this session and legislators have made it one. While there are competing ideas for what should be included–here’s what’s currently in play.
Known as SB 90 here’s the summary: Election Administration; Limiting the duration of requests for vote-by-mail ballots to all elections through the end of the calendar year of the next regularly scheduled general election; requiring vote-by-mail ballot requests to include additional identifying information regarding the requesting elector; prohibiting the display of an absent elector’s party affiliation or other partisan information on the outside of vote-by-mail ballots and return and secrecy envelopes; prohibiting the use of drop boxes for the return of vote-by-mail ballots, etc.
So plainly what would it do?
- Requests for vote by mail ballots would have to occur each election cycle
- Increases the window of time for Supervisors of Elections to begin processing vote-by-mail ballots by up to 40 days before Election Day
- Disallows the printing of political party official on the outside of a vote by mail ballot
- Prohibits the use of drop boxes for vote by mail ballots which aren’t supervised
Now – what's analytically objectionable here? Still, political opportunists have still opposed it using similar diatribes to what was dishonestly spread regarding Georgia’s new law. As a result – the final committee vote which had been scheduled for yesterday was proposed. If you’d like to see this pass you should inform your state senator and state representative. They appear to be wavering due fear of political pressure a la Georgia.
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