(USA Features) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signed what he described as the country’s “strongest election law” on Thursday during a brief television appearance on Fox News.
“We’re making sure we’re enforcing voter ID,” DeSantis said during the signing in West Palm Beach in front of cheering supporters. “We’re also banning ballot harvesting. We’re not going to let political operatives go and get satchels of votes to dump them in some dropbox.”
The measure, S-90, bans “mass mailing of balloting,” the governor noted.
“We’ve had absentee voting in Florida for a long time. You request the ballot, you get it, and you mail it in. But to just indiscriminately send them out is not a recipe for success,” he added.
DeSantis noted that in the 2020 election, there were some 11 million votes cast in the state, 99 percent of which were counted by midnight. The new law will “make it even better as we go forward.”
“We’re proud of the strides that we’ve made,” he said. “We’re not resting on our laurels, and signing this bill says ‘Florida, your vote counts. Your vote is going to be cast with integrity and transparency.'”
The GOP governor also said he is “not a fan” of ballot drop boxes. However, the Republican-controlled legislature chose to keep them while restricting how they are used and where they’re located.
“The drop boxes will be available only when they’re monitored and during regular voting hours,” the governor said Thursday. “You can’t just leave these boxes out where there is no supervision at all hours of the night.”
The bill also prevents private funding of elections, as happened last year. Republicans complained that most of the private funds went to Democratic districts.
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