Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a contentious voting bill into law on Thursday morning, joining a slew of other GOP-led states in tightening the screws on mail-in voting in the wake of Donald Trump’s false allegations of electoral fraud in 2020.
The Florida Republican highlighted aspects of the bill during an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” including tougher voter ID standards for voting by mail, limiting who can pick up and return a voter’s ballot, and prohibiting private funding for elections.
DeSantis said, “Me signing this bill says: Florida, your vote counts, your vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency, and this is a great place for democracy.”
Local news organizations told CNN that they were not permitted to attend the morning signing and that it was a Fox News exclusive.
Senate Bill 90 imposes new limits on dropbox use and expands partisan observation control during ballot tabulation.
The new Florida voting law is already being challenged in the courts.
Within minutes of DeSantis signing the bill, a group led by the League of Women Voters of Florida and the Black Voters Matter Fund declared it had filed a lawsuit. It opposes several provisions, including the ban on associations and volunteers returning ballots on behalf of voters and the current limits on ballot drop boxes.
The new law is described as “the latest in a long line of voter suppression laws targeting Florida’s Black voters, Latino voters, and voters with disabilities” in a separate lawsuit filed Thursday morning by Common Cause, Florida NAACP branches, and a disabilities rights organization.
Last week, after days of heated debate and last-minute amendments bouncing back and forth between houses, the Florida Republican-controlled state House and Senate reached an agreement. They passed SB90 on a party-line vote on the eve of the state’s legislative sessions’ final day.
Following record voter turnout in last November’s elections, the bill is part of a national Republican-led push to limit voting access at the state level. As of March 24, 361 bills with voting restrictions had been introduced in 47 states, according to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
As state legislatures enter the final months of their respective sessions, the drive to limit voting has escalated in the last month.
Democrats repeatedly alluded to the ongoing national outcry over Georgia’s latest electoral reform bill during debate on the Florida bill, which they called a “revival of Jim Crow in this state.”
“The bill that passed just north of us sent us a message, and the response to that bill should let us know we shouldn’t be doing this,” Democratic state Rep. Michael Grieco said during the House debate, begging, “Please don’t Georgia my Florida.”
The bill will include “guardrails” to discourage others from “gaming the system” in the future, according to Florida Republicans, who have consistently stated that their state ran a competitive and safe 2020 election.
“We’ve had voter ID. It works. It’s the right thing to do,” DeSantis said last week, adding that the state’s 2020 election was “fair and transparent, and the reforms we have coming will make it even better.”
On Monday, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney publicly refuted Trump’s latest false claim that he would have won the 2020 election if not for “fraudulent” votes, her latest criticism of the former president that has angered many in her own party.
Earlier this week, Cheney tweeted, “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen.”
“Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
Cheney is now facing opposition from her Republican colleagues and is likely to lose her leadership position.
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