Florida GOP leaders unveil new bill with election law changes sought by DeSantis - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA
A Republican state senator Monday unveiled legislation with a slew of changes to Florida's voting laws, including a proposal sought by Gov. Ron DeSantis to create a new police force investigating voter fraud and a mandate to purge voter rolls more frequently.
The bill comes as former President Donald Trump continues to spread unfounded claims about fraud in the 2020 election, an issue that has enflamed the GOP base and put pressure on the state's Republican leaders to take action.
“Confidence in the integrity of our elections is essential to maintaining a democratic form of government," Sen. Travis Hutson, R-St. Augustine, said in filing the legislation, which is being proposed as an amendment to a bill (SB 524).
The legislation is scheduled for a Tuesday hearing in the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections. It is sure to be greeted with outrage by Democrats, who have accused the GOP of using Trump's fraud claims as a pretext to make it harder to vote.
Hutson's amendment also makes changes to mail voting by requiring additional personal information to be included with submitted ballots, either the last four digits of the voter's driver's license or the last four digits of the person's social security number.
The amended legislation also would require elections officials in each county to update voter rolls every year, instead of every odd year. DeSantis called for more efforts to purge voter rolls in his State of the State speech at the opening of the 2022 legislative session.
Lawmakers would grant more power to Gov. DeSantis
It also gives added power to DeSantis.
The governor would appoint a special Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent in each of the agency’s seven regions who would be “dedicated to the investigation of alleged violations of election laws.”
It would also include new state reporting requirements for potential elections violations, detailing the number of complaints received, independent investigations started and the number referred to prosecution.
The Hutson proposal also would increase misdemeanor penalties to felonies for various election violations, including collecting the mail-in ballots of other people or paying petition gatherers, based on the number of signatures collected.
It would also ban ranked-choice voting – a trending elections change recently used in the New York City mayor’s race – from being used in local elections. Florida law already prohibits it in state-level races.
Most of all for the governor, the Hutson proposal would advance DeSantis’ call for a new law enforcement arm to police Florida elections, an idea that has sparked concern among voter outreach organizations and state elections officials worried about how this force could be deployed.
Governor has not disputed Trump's election fraud claims
DeSantis has never dismissed claims by former President Donald Trump that he lost the White House in 2020 due to widespread voter irregularities and fraud.
At the same time, though, the governor has praised the accuracy and efficiency of Florida’s election systems in the 2020 elections.
But Hutson’s proposal would give life to the governor’s proposed Election Crimes and Security investigative force within the Florida Department of State. DeSantis envisions a $5.7 million, 52-person agency.
The governor has said the force will ensure that Florida campaign laws are followed. But elections supervisors have questioned whether it could blur existing legal lines of authority when wrongdoing is suspected.
They also say the Office of Election Crimes and Security is overkill in a state where election law violations are considered infrequent.
But the proposal was unveiled by DeSantis in November at a campaign-style rally in West Palm Beach — the same location where he signed into law a voter measure last year that imposes limits on ballot drop boxes, vote-by-mail and the collection of absentee ballots, which he has derided as ballot harvesting.
Florida’s election law changes were part of a nationwide push by Republican lawmakers in dozens of states to overhaul voting laws following the 2020 elections. A federal trial challenging the law as unconstitutional opened Monday in Tallahassee, with a host of civil rights and voters’ organizations asking that the measure be overturned.
Previously:Voter rights groups set to challenge Florida’s restrictive new election laws in federal court
Allied organizations that promoted expanded voter access and get-out-the-vote efforts have said they fear the proposed Office of Elections Crimes and Security could target groups for investigations for a variety of reasons – among them, their politics.
“This is merely a new variation on the nationwide trend of attempting to sabotage elections for partisan gain – only this time, it uses the power of the executive branch to do so,” Kirk Bailey, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said of the proposed elections crimes office.
source: https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2022/01/31/election-law-changes-sought-gov-ron-desantis-unveiled-new-bill/9290038002/
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