Apparently, the Florida Republican Party, in lockstep with Republican organizations across the United States, has aggressively pursued dishonest strategies to reduce Democratic voter turnout.
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Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock spoke on the first night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
US Senator Ralph Warnock of Georgia summed it up well in his appeal to the Democratic National Convention on Monday evening. On January 6, 2021, he said, Donald Trump instigated a violent attack on the peaceful transfer of power in our country. This attempt was driven by the “big lie” that he was cheated out of his re-election. But behind this lie lies an even bigger one.
“It’s the lie that this increasingly diverse American electorate cannot determine the future of the country,” Warnock said. “The lie and logic of January 6 is a disease. It’s a cancer that has metastasized into dozens of voter suppression laws across the country.”
Florida is no exception. While its laws are always passed in the name of fair elections, our experience in Palm Beach County proves that the insidious motives behind their passage are bearing fruit as the state’s Republican Party seeks to increase its majority power.
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In an Aug. 17 article in the Palm Beach Post, Wendy Sartory Link, the county’s elections director, confirmed that absentee ballot numbers have dropped due to a new state law that requires voters to make extra efforts to obtain mail-in ballots. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s primary, her office received 183,000 requests for absentee ballots, compared to 328,000 in 2022. Although more votes were expected by the Aug. 20 primary day, only 82,863 absentee ballots had been cast by Friday afternoon, compared to 132,761 last time.
Previously, the law required people who wanted to continue voting by mail in the next election to simply check a box at the bottom of their ballot. Now you have to apply every two years by cumbersomely submitting a paper or online form or calling the election office. That may not seem like much. But it doesn’t take much to skew the outcome, with predictable effects on the count of Democratic voters in the district. So, disingenuous concerns about outdated voter rolls result in a skewed and undemocratic outcome.
Tallahassee has also been tinkering with the possibility of using drop boxes outside polling places. Forgive us: In the new, Orwellian parlance, the law calls these boxes “secure ballot collection stations.” There has never been a discernible security problem with voter fraud at the ballot boxes, which are monitored by cameras.
But now the already financially strained polling stations must provide two staff to monitor each voting booth during the election. The voting booths can only be set up in polling stations and can only be used during early voting hours.
In addition, there are new laws that tighten the requirements for third-party nonprofit organizations that register voters or, for example, collect ballots from senior citizens to deliver to election offices.
Add to that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to redraw a northern Florida congressional district to limit the influence of the black vote, his creation of a poll police force whose first major action was to arrest released felons who had been misled by the state into believing they were eligible to vote, and his attempt to mislead referendum questions – against the wishes of hundreds of thousands of voters who petitioned to put the original wording on the ballot.
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Clearly, the Florida Republican Party, in lockstep with Republican organizations across the United States, has aggressively pursued dishonest strategies to reduce Democratic voter turnout. As Senator Warnock put it, “People without vision drive division.”
But a more honest approach would be to acknowledge that the world is changing and take action accordingly: actions that support women’s reproductive rights, for example, actions that promote academic freedom rather than restrict it, actions that promote equality and diversity rather than division, actions that address climate change and seek compromise on immigration to secure our borders but treat refugees humanely.
Until that happens, we can only urge voters who put their values and vision first to fight in good faith and overcome any obstacles that are placed in their path.
