Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced several reforms Friday designed to ensure election integrity.
Appearing in West Palm Beach, DeSantis backed legislation that would:
- Address ballot drop boxes
- Address ballot harvesting
- Ban “mass mailing of vote-by-mail ballots”
- Require requests for vote-by-mail ballots to be made each election year
- Require a signature on a ballot to match “the most recent signature on file.”
The legislation would also promote transparency in the counting process, allowing political parties and candidates to observe the signature matching process.
Counties would no long be able to receive grants from private third-party organizations for “get out the vote” initiatives.
Breitbart News extensively covered donations by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the Center for Technology and Civic Life, an organization that spent hundreds of millions of dollars on increasing turnout in heavily Democrat areas.
“We have led on this issue from the very beginning,” DeSantis said Friday. “The results speak for themselves, but we also can’t rest on our laurels.”
DeSantis said the intent is to ensure “citizens have confidence in the elections.”
“We want everyone to vote, we don’t want anyone to cheat,” he said, adding he wants to “strike the appropriate balance.”
DeSantis noted paying for ballot harvesting is already illegal in the state, but he said it does not currently address those who “volunteer” to round up ballots.
“My view is: We should have no ballot harvesting,” he said, promoting cheers from attendees at the West Palm Beach hotel.
DeSantis also intends to require “real-time reporting of voter turnout data at the precinct level,” and allow citizens to see “how many ballots have been requested, how many have been received, and how many are left to be counted.”
DeSantis’s full press conference can be viewed here:
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.