Banning no-excuse vote by mail is a terrible idea | Opinion
A Republican state senator has filed a bill that would take away Floridians' right to vote by mail, except in cases where they will be absent from their home county, hospitalized or in jail. Here's why that's a bad idea.
Lawton Chiles, the last Democrat elected governor of Florida, is credited as saying “You should wake up every day looking for the trouble you can get into.” Some legislators in Tallahassee seem to be taking that advice to heart.
As a bill-filing deadline loomed last Friday, state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia — a Republican from Spring Hill whose previous work includes a bill banning the Florida Democratic Party that, for obvious reasons, did not pass — filed Senate Bill 1752, innocuously titled “An act related to elections.” However, as is often the case with legislation, the devil is in the details — SB 1752 virtually eliminates vote by mail, the voting method used by nearly five million Floridians in the last presidential election.
Floridians have been able to request vote-by-mail ballots from their local supervisor of elections offices without needing to provide an excuse for years. The vote-by-mail process has proven to be secure, and in the aftermath of the 2020 election, which saw record vote by mail usage due to the pandemic, experts from across the country on both sides of the aisle (and our own Gov. Ron DeSantis) praised Florida’s elections processes and procedures after decades of embarrassing headlines.
Naturally, Republicans in Tallahassee have worked hard since then to make sure we return to being the butt of the nation’s jokes.
This work began immediately after the 2020 election, when DeSantis signed a law that canceled everyone’s vote-by-mail requests (which were previously valid for up to four years) and required voters to sign up for a vote-by-mail ballot every two years. Now, if Ingoglia has his way, voters would only be able to vote by mail if they will be absent from their home county on Election Day and during early voting. Never mind every two years — voters would need to provide a new excuse for an absentee ballot every single election, even elections that are just a few weeks away from each other.
The burden of this proposal on the voter and local supervisor of elections offices cannot be overstated. Just imagine: If enacted, this bill would mean Florida is a state where folks don’t need to provide a reason to buy an assault weapon, but do need to provide one in order to cast a ballot.
Not only would this legislation significantly suppress voter participation, but it would also lead to heartbreaking outcomes for Floridians who just want to participate in the democratic process. What happens if a last-minute business trip, an unexpected death in the family or, say, a global pandemic results in a voter who had not been planning to be absent being unable to make it to the polls? Since vote-by-mail ballots need to be requested at least 10 days before an election, these voters would simply be out of luck.
It wasn’t just Chiles who spoke about getting into some trouble. The late civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis famously said that “good trouble, necessary trouble” was needed in order to “redeem the soul of America.” We all need to pay attention to the myriad ways folks in power are chipping away at our democratic institutions and make our voices heard both in the halls of government and at the ballot box, no matter how difficult it might be to participate.
No excuses.
Chad Klitzman is a lawyer and screenwriter from Weston running for Florida Senate District 35. He previously ran for Broward County Supervisor of Elections in 2020.