The Florida legislature has passed a bill that would create an “Office of Election Crimes and Security” to deal with cases of voter fraud as part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ election integrity program.
But how corrupt is the voting system in Florida, and is it a big enough problem that the state should create a separate law enforcement branch to deal with it?
On the surface, it doesn’t appear that voter fraud is a big problem in most of Florida. There is a problem with slow counting and some irregular mail-in ballots in the most populous counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach, and there was also an issue with some voters registering as Democrats but finding their registration was switched to Republican.
But DeSantis and other state officials have assured people that the integrity of Florida elections is sound.
More importantly, some of the measures in the election integrity bill that created the election police are far more important in ensuring that elections remain fair.
Other parts of the bill would make “ballot harvesting” a felony while another section would mandate that election supervisors screen voter rolls on a yearly basis to look for voters who may have moved or are no longer eligible. The Florida agency responsible for issuing driver’s licenses would be required to notify state elections officials monthly if they issued a license to non-citizens who are in the country legally.
The bill also changes the name of drop boxes to “secure ballot intake stations,” which would allow Republicans to suggest they got rid of them — a position pushed by Trump. But drop boxes would still be allowed as long as they are supervised.
Placing “after-hours” drop boxes outside of County Clerk offices should be allowed — as long as the boxes are supervised and kept under constant video surveillance. But putting election drop boxes in places where anyone can come by at any time, day or night, and access the boxes — even though they’re locked — is just stupid, and any Democrat who argues that it’s “voter suppression” to get rid of those boxes is just playing politics.
It’s the “ballot harvesting” section of the law that will cause the most number of problems. The new law will make it illegal to possess more than two ballots. This is worrisome because it will severely impact older voters who live in senior centers or nursing homes who depend on someone to collect their absentee or mail-in ballot and bring it to an election’s office or put it in a dropbox.
The bill is necessary to stop ballot harvesters from collecting thousands of ballots and handing them in. No one knows what, if anything, was done with those ballots when they were out of the voter’s custody.
But criminalizing doing a favor for a friend? That smacks of overkill.
“Voter fraud is real, voter suppression is not,” said state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-35th District). That may very well be true. But does it justify forming an election police force?
“The whole point of this bill is to deter people from committing fraud,” state Rep. Daniel Perez, a Republican from Miami-Dade County, said during debate on the bill this week. “We’re trying to stop the bad actors.”
The Department of State received 262 election-fraud complaint forms in 2020 and referred 75 to law enforcement or prosecutors. About 11 million Floridians cast ballots for president that November.
We are continually being told that voter fraud is not a problem, that it doesn’t exist, that there’s no such thing. But if Democrats are truly serious about “every vote counts,” they would embrace ballot integrity measures and join with Republicans to make U.S. elections the freest, fairest, and most fraud-free elections in the world.