Posted on 11/18/2024 7:30:15 PM PST by SeekAndFind
TALLAHASSEE — A controversial 2021 state law making it harder for people to vote by mail could complicate holding special elections to fill two Florida congressional seats after President-elect Donald Trump tapped Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz to serve in his administration.
The 2021 law included requiring voters to request mail-in ballots each election cycle, rather than every four years as was previously allowed. The Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the change after Democrats across the country relied heavily on mail-in ballots to help President Joe Biden defeat Trump in 2020.
Trump this week set the stage for special elections in Florida after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
The president-elect tapped Gaetz, a firebrand Republican from Northwest Florida, to serve as attorney general. Gaetz quickly resigned from Congress on Wednesday. Trump also selected Waltz, who was first elected to Congress in 2018, to serve as national security adviser.
After last week’s elections, Republicans make up a slim majority in Congress, creating pressure to fill the vacancies in the Florida districts, which are GOP strongholds. Waltz represents Congressional District 6, which is made up of all or parts of Flagler, Lake, Marion, Putnam, St. Johns and Volusia counties. Gaetz represented Congressional District 1, which is made up of all or parts of Escambia, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Walton counties.
DeSantis is expected to quickly announce dates for special primary and special general elections.
But the 2021 law, which says “one request is deemed sufficient to receive a vote-by-mail ballot for all elections through the end of the calendar year of the next regularly scheduled general election,” means that voters will have to make new mail-in ballot requests for elections after Dec. 31.
The change in the length of time requests for mail-in ballots are valid has created a “conundrum” for officials preparing for the special elections, Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux told The News Service of Florida on Friday.
Florida law also requires supervisors of elections to send mail-in ballots to overseas voters and military voters 45 days prior to an election. In addition, a federal law requires supervisors to send a notice of upcoming elections to voters who are overseas or in the military, Lux said.
With municipal elections scheduled in March, Lux said he generally tries to send such notices out “the week before Thanksgiving,” which would be next week.
“The question is, will I have an election date to put on there for them to say, ‘Hey, by the way, there’s this election coming, and if you want to vote in it, here’s how you get a ballot.’ Because otherwise, all I have are my March municipal elections,” Lux said.
David Ramba, executive director of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association, suggested that DeSantis set the special primary elections around Feb. 15 and the special general elections around April 1, to allow local elections officials to comply with the 45-day requirement for overseas and military ballots.
The schedule for the special congressional elections — coming on the heels of the presidential election — highlights problems with the shortened time frame to request mail-in ballots, a change which the supervisors opposed in 2021.
“Our position is that current voters who have submitted valid mail-in ballots in an election should be allowed to check the box, or elect to continue to receive their ballot for the next cycle when they vote in order to ensure voters who wish to receive their ballot in this manner can continue to do so,” Ramba told the News Service. “This process of wiping out the list every two years is a huge workload for a supervisor’s office, which, in this case, is also trying to do a quick turnaround on a special election as well as re-educate voters that received a vote-by-mail ballot three months ago that they now will not receive it again unless they reapply for that service.”
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried said the shortened time frame for vote-by-mail requests has “created chaos” in the electoral process. Republican lawmakers had “no credible reason” for requiring voters to request mail-in ballots every two years, she said.
“It was because they (Republicans) were losing at vote-by-mail. And now you have more voter suppression, and we have these special elections that are coming up and people aren’t going to be able to vote the way that they traditionally have,” Fried said.
Democrats are recruiting candidates to run for the congressional seats, which will “create a domino effect” by opening up other races, Fried told the News Service.
“What they (Republicans) have done is created chaos in our electoral process,” Fried said in a phone interview Friday. “It’s expensive. It’s being able to reach all these individuals in a very short period of time. But these are the unintended, or intended, consequences of their short-sightedness when they start to play around with these new laws on voters and voting.”
Lux said he mailed “way fewer” ballots to Okaloosa voters for the November election and had a higher percentage of returned ballots than he did in 2022. The changes to the mail-in ballot requests turned out to be “a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.
“Zeroing out the requests means the only people that I’m mailing ballots to are people who are actively saying, ‘I need a ballot for this election,’” the supervisor said.
In addition to notices from elections officials, voters also will likely be nudged to request mail-in ballots by political parties or campaigns.
Supervisors in the affected counties could face other issues as well, according to Lux.
“We just used most of our ballot paper, we just used most of our ballot envelopes. So now I have to order new envelopes,” he said.
Note that failed English major Dara Kam didn’t include any actual numbers or data in her emotional hissy fit masquerading as “news”...
The democrat party is dead, the enemy is on the run, and your sycophant media will close for lack of readership.
MORE PEOPLE CAME OUT TO VOTE IN AMERICA THAN EVER AND THE TOTAL POPULAR COUNT IS APPROXIMATELY 132 MILLION.
. IN 2020, THE TOTAL POPULARE VOTE WAS 155 MILLION.
, DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE MORE CAME OUT FOR THE BIDEN/TRUMP MATCH THAN THE HARRIS /TRUMP MATCH ?
. ME NEITHER
“It was because they (Republicans) were losing at vote-by-mail. And now you have more voter suppression, and we have these special elections that are coming up and people aren’t going to be able to vote the way that they traditionally have,” Fried said.
So, Nikki, how did YOU win your election as Ag Commissioner in 2018? Were the "counters" just better with you than they were with Gillum and Nelson?
“THE TOTAL POPULAR COUNT IS APPROXIMATELY 132 MILLION.”
Your number for the popular vote in 2024 is not correct. Currently Trump and Harris have about 150.5 million votes combined, and counting is still continuing. Other candidates, including Jill Stein and RFK Jr., account for about another 2.5 million votes.
be able to vote the way that they traditionally have,” Fried said.“
En masse mail in voting is not the way people have traditionally voted and that lying skank knows it. Mail in is every bit the fraud racket we knew it was going to be.
2024 is close enough to “read” correctly and even with Stein and RFKjr . . . my statement is worthy of thought.
The Florida legislature can take any action necessary to correct any issues. Even a temporarily solution if one is required.
MAKING IT HARDER TO USE MAIL IN BALLOTS IS PROBABLY THE;
BEST DAMN THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO ANY...ANY ELECTION
I ONLY HOPE THAT IS ONE THING THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD FORBID....NO MORE MAIL IN VOTING. PERIOD
You can apply online, call or visit the office. Why is this difficult? Who said it was controversial?
Fried could’ve meant how people are used to voting, which, for many, is by mail.
knarf, YOU ARE BRILLIANT.....
CONGRATULATIONS.
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Matt Gaetz has 3 critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind.
He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.
Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice.
1:59 AM · Nov 19, 2024 644.1K Views
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858766986508927479
Puts a crimp in the steal you mean
Mail-in vote should be very exceptional!
Let everybody just show up on election day!
This all article is a crap!
Almost every voter can be reached by text message as a first contact. The Florida Republican Party should handle the voter contacts for their voters, and not depend on the government offices to contact their voters. Mail-in ballot security laws are important and should not be for the mere inconvenience of following them.
Who’s numbers are you quoting?
ComDem’s have been committing voter fraud since time began.
Do a look back on LBJ in July 1948:
Remember Bill Mason http://www.texastotheworld.com/remember-bill-mason/ LBJ 1948 voter fraud in ballot box 13 in Jim Wells Co., TX
Remember Bill Mason (Jan 28, 2015)
http://web.archive.org/web/20150216042636/http://www.texastotheworld.com/remember-bill-mason/
Traditionally is the word that was used and it was intentional because it has a specific meaning
That means the leftest deeepstate press cronies hate it because it supports our republic and not their fascist state.
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