A federal judge erred in placing Florida in preclearance protocols under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and by striking certain provisions in the Sunshine State’s recently enacted election reform law, states an amicus brief filed by the non-partisan Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) before a federal appeals court.
The head of nationwide voter integrity group the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) has praised Florida state lawmakers for being the first to approve legislation to create an office dedicated to prosecuting violations of state election laws.
The Florida House of Representatives has sent Gov. Ron DeSantis legislation that would create the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which the Republican governor is expected to sign into law.
A Florida Senate committee recently cleared legislation, Senate Bill 524, that would create an office to investigate election crimes, a development Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former Virginia attorney general, calls “very encouraging.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that restricting Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s inordinate influence in elections, and other recently enacted election law reforms, will increase the security in the elections in a state that already “does a great job.”
Legislation is awaiting action in the U.S. Senate that would make sweeping changes to the nation’s elections laws and would nullify Florida’s newly enacted voter integrity provisions, including one that strengthens voter ID requirements.
Census data shows that voter suppression claims over the past year by some of the nation’s leading Democrats are completely unfounded, wrote Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative with the Heritage Foundation, in a recent Fox News op-ed piece.
Major provisions of Florida’s election laws, including new voter integrity ones signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this month, would be invalidated under federal legislation that House Democrats approved in March.
Florida could be forced to surrender its constitutionally derived right to set its own election practices under the For the People Act of 2021, currently awaiting action in the U.S. Senate after the measure was approved along partisan lines in the House in early March, critics argue.