By Julia Harte
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed a law curtailing access to absentee ballots and adding new hurdles to the process of submitting them, the latest Republican-backed voting restriction to become law in an election battleground state.
The new law restricts the use of absentee ballot drop boxes to the early voting period, adds new identification requirements for requesting such ballots and requires voters to re-apply for absentee ballots in each new general election cycle. Previously, Florida voters only had to register for an absentee ballot once every two election cycles.
The law also gives partisan election observers more power to raise objections and requires people offering voters assistance to stay at least 150 feet away from polling places, an increase from the previous 100-foot radius.
Republican lawmakers in recent months have justified a slew of proposed new voting barriers across the United States by citing unsubstantiated claims from former President Donald Trump, a Florida absentee voter himself, that the November election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from him.
Judges discredited such claims in more than 60 lawsuits that failed to overturn the result. Lawmakers in Republican-controlled states including Georgia, Texas and Arizona nevertheless proposed legislation that they said was necessary to curb voter fraud, which is relatively rare in the United States.
DeSantis acknowledged in a February press release that Florida had “held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country” in November, but said new limits on absentee ballots were needed to safeguard election integrity.
Mail-in ballots or absentee ballots were used by Democrats in greater numbers than Republicans in the 2020 general election as many people wanted to avoid in-person voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
Florida Republicans used mail-in voting slightly more than Democrats in the 2014, 2016 and 2018 general elections. But in November, Democrats submitted 2.2 million mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million from Republican voters, state records show.
“Florida’s Republican legislative leaders seem determined to weaken the system that voters have relied on, without significant problems, for the better part of a generation,” Sylvia Albert, voting and elections director for good-government watchdog Common Cause, said in a statement on April 28 after Florida’s House passed the bill.
In March, Georgia’s Republican governor signed a law that tightened absentee ballot identification requirements, restricted ballot drop box use and allowed a Republican-controlled state agency to take over local voting operations.
Democrats and voting rights advocates sued Georgia over the measure, saying it was aimed at disenfranchising Black voters, whose heavy turnout helped propel Biden to the presidency and delivered Democrats two U.S. Senate victories in Georgia in January that gave them control of the chamber. Top U.S. companies also decried Georgia’s law, and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of the state in protest.
Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who represents a coalition of civil rights groups suing Georgia, indicated on Twitter on Monday that he also would challenge Florida’s new law in court. “When [DeSantis] signs, Florida will be sued,” he wrote.
(Reporting by Julia HarteEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Bernadette Baum)
