The Florida Senate has passed a sweeping new bill to overhaul the state’s electoral process, adding new restrictions to the state’s electoral code and establishing a law enforcement agency dedicated exclusively to investigating election-related crimes.
The bill, which passed 24-14, is now heading to the state House of Representatives, where it could be passed as early as next week and land on the table of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is expected to sign it. One Republican, State Senator Jeff Brandeis, voted no. Democratic Senator Laurenne Ausley initially voted yes, but immediately posted on twitter that she “pressed the wrong button” and has since changed her voice.
Although Republicans in the state passed another sweeping ballot law last May, Mr. DeSantis has made electoral reform a top priority in this legislative session as well. Both attempts came after Florida’s 2020 election passed without any major issues, and were touted by Republicans in the state as the “gold standard” for elections.
The bill is set to be the first major election-related bill to be passed this year in a critical battlefield state, and it won’t point to a wave of new election laws adding more voting restrictions that began last year. , will not be the apogee. with 34 laws passed in 19 states.
The essence of the bill is to create a permanent Office of Electoral Crime Investigation in the State Department, making Florida one of the first states to establish an agency dedicated exclusively to election crime and election fraud, despite the fact that such crimes are extremely rare in USA. United States. An Associated Press investigation last year uncovered fewer than 475 potential fraud claims out of 25.5 million ballots filed for the president in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The new office will assist the Secretary of State’s office in investigating complaints and allegations, initiating their own independent investigations, and overseeing the election fraud hotline. It will include an unspecified number of investigators, and Mr. DeSantis will also appoint at least one special officer in each of the State Department of Law Enforcement’s regional offices to investigate election-related crimes.
The bill will also raise penalties for those who collect and file more than two absentee ballots, from a misdemeanor to a felony.
Voter rights groups are concerned that continued criminalization of the voting process could both deter voters from participating and make election officials fear prosecution for honest errors.
“Engaging law enforcement with such a vague mandate obviously creates problems and can certainly be detrimental in terms of voters’ ability to vote if they are concerned about law enforcement involvement,” said Daniel Griffith, political director at Secure. Democracy USA, a non-partisan organization dedicated to elections and voter access. “And it has a detrimental effect on election organizers if they’re worried about having law enforcement behind them.”
The Florida Secretary of State, the Department of Law Enforcement, and the Attorney General have previously investigated election fraud. The Democrats argued that the bill effectively created a new agency to do the work that the existing agencies were doing. Democrats say the creation of the agency is just a political ploy to show that Florida and Mr. DeSantis remain tough on an issue that is key to both the Republican base and former President Donald Trump.
“Why are we doing this?” said state senator Lori Berman during a debate on Friday. “The only thing I can assume is that we are driven by the Big Lie that the national elections did not go well. But we know it’s not true.”
State Senator Travis Hutson, the bill’s sponsor and Republican, defended it during a debate on Friday, saying that having a special force would catch more fraud and be able to deal with more charges.
“We really had a great election, the governor mentioned it,” Mr. Hutson said. “But I would tell you that we can always do better.”
He added: “I will say there is no voter intimidation or vote suppression in this bill.”
The new campaign headquarters also drew criticism from some Republican members who argued it was not necessary.
“Having 15 people investigating what is potentially a handful of complaints that will eventually be confirmed is just absolutely comical,” Mr. Brandeis said during Friday’s debate, referring to the executive’s proposals to appoint 15 investigators to office. . “Therefore, today I am not going to support this bill.
In the past, uniformed law enforcement officers have been used to deter and suppress voters. In 1982, the Republican National Committee dispatched a group of off-duty armed police officers known as the National Ballot Security Task Force to linger at the New Jersey polls during a fierce gubernatorial election. The Democratic National Committee sued, forcing the NRC to issue a consent decree to ban such tactics.
Those memories seemed to still be in the minds of the legislators in the Florida legislature. During Thursday’s debate, state senator Victor Manuel Torres Jr. asked Mr. Hutson, the sponsor of the bill, “Will these people be in uniform or civilian clothes?”
Mr. Hutson responded that the current Secretary of State’s Law Enforcement Unit wears civilian clothes and that Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers are likely to be in uniform.
In addition to the new Office of Electoral Crimes and Security, the bill adds other new restrictions on voting, including a ban on high-ranking voting; raising the penalty limit for third-party registration groups from $1,000 to $50,000; expanding the ban on private funding of election administration to include “the cost of any litigation”; and replacing references to “ballot collection boxes” with “safe ballot pick-up points”.