After a tumultuous and polarizing election year that saw massive voter turnout, at least 33 states—including Florida—are proposing legislation that could affect voting access and election procedures, according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice.
But Pinellas County native Rep. Michele K. Rayner-Goolsby (D-St. Petersburg) and Tampa’s own Rep. Susan Valdes (D-Tampa) want to make sure that doesn’t happen in Florida.
Nationwide, state lawmakers have introduced, pre-filed, or carried over 165 bills that could restrict voting access. This is more than four times the number of restrictive voting bills introduced around the same time last year.
“These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election,” the report reads, alluding to the widespread myth of election fraud and other election irregularities that have stoked the fire of electoral conspiracy theories and have been implicated in right-wing violence like that seen at the U.S. Capitol.
According to the report, these restrictive bills primarily seek to create additional hurdles to voting by mail, reduce voter registration opportunities, expand voter roll purges, and impose more stringent ID requirements for voting.
In other words, they seek to undermine voting methods that helped drive the nation’s highest turnout for an election in over 100 years.
Leading the nation with the introduction of 19 restrictive voting bills is Arizona, followed by Pennsylvania with 14 bills, Georgia with 11, and New Hampshire with 10 bills that could influence voting access in future elections.
On the restrictive side, Florida, which saw over 70% voter turnout last year, is noted in the report for a Senate bill (SB 90) filed by Florida Sen. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) to limit how long you can request vote-by-mail ballots before being required to reapply. Legislation has also been introduced in Florida that would require more stringent voter ID requirements, according to the report.
Expanding voter access
On the other hand, as some state lawmakers seek to complicate the process of casting a vote in their respective states, others have proposed legislation that could serve to expand voting access.
As of the report’s publication, at least 541 vote expansion bills had been proposed in state legislatures nationwide—an increase from the 188 expansive bills filed the same time last year, and dwarfing the number of bills proposed to potentially suppress the vote.
New York leads the country with its introduction of 87 expansive voting bills, followed by New Jersey and Mississippi with 38 expansive bills each. Major themes in expansive voting legislation include early voting, voter registration, mail voting, and voting rights restoration—an area where Florida has had a troubled history, after overwhelmingly voting to restore voting rights for eligible felons through a ballot initiative in 2018.
First-term lawmaker and Pinellas County native Michele Rayner (D-St. Petersburg, pictured above) of the Florida House has sponsored a bill (HB 153) to streamline and modernize the process of registering to vote through the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DMV), with an identical bill in the Senate.
If enacted, Florida would join 19 states and the District of Columbia (D.C) that have already adopted similar automatic voter registration policies. Alaska and Georgia, on the other hand, have introduced bills to eliminate automatic voter registration, while Arizona—which doesn’t currently have such a policy—has introduced legislation to prohibit it.
Local lawmaker Susan Valdes (D-Tampa, pictured below) filed a bill in the Florida House (HB 869) this month that would require Supervisor of Elections offices to enclose postage-paid mail envelopes with every vote-by-mail ballot. This is currently a practice that is determined on a county level.
Identical bills filed in the Florida House and Senate (HB 103, SB 1204) could also extend the deadline for receipt or postmark of mail ballots and, like Valdes’ bill, also require that postage-paid envelopes be mailed with ballots to eliminate the cost barrier.
The Brennan Center report notes that some states leading the way in expansive bills are, interestingly, those with sordid histories of voter suppression, including states like Texas, Mississippi, and Missouri, “suggesting that there remains concerted energy around policies that make voting easier, even if passage will be an uphill battle politically.”
Making every vote count
Along with13 other states, Florida is noted for its proposal to award electoral votes to U.S. presidential candidates during election years based on the national popular vote.
For context, President Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 7 million in the 2020 election cycle. In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes, but lost by 77 votes in the Electoral College.
In Florida, the National Popular Vote Bill (HB 39) comes from Florida House Rep. Joseph Geller (D-Dania Beach) which, if enacted, would have Florida join an interstate compact to award its 29 electoral votes to the presidential candidate that gets the most votes in all 50 states. In the Senate, an identical bill has been filed by Florida Senator Victor Torres (D-Orlando).
Florida is currently one of 48 states that awards their electoral votes to the winner of the state popular vote. The sponsor of the National Popular Vote bill, Geller, has filed similar bills in previous sessions with little traction, but he and national leaders lobbying for the National Popular vote compact see greater urgency in light of greater criticism towards the machinations of the Electoral College and its role in upholding democracy.
The National Popular Vote bill, notably, does not call to abolish or eliminate the Electoral College, nor would it require a constitutional amendment to pass.
The compact would only activate if the participating states represent an absolute majority of electoral college votes. So far, 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed their own National Popular Vote bills, amounting to 196 electoral votes—edging closer to the 270 needed to pass the law.
In a 2017 survey conducted by Florida Atlantic University and commissioned by the League of Women Voters, 68% of Floridians expressed support for electing the Presidential candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states.
Gerrymandering is still a thing, too
As legislative moves to address—or, in some cases promote—voter suppression abound, the nation also faces redistricting this year. Elections experts told the New York Times they believe the Republican Party could overtake the U.S. House, currently controlled by the Democratic majority, in 2022 solely based on gains from redrawn districts in eighteen states controlled by Republicans, including Florida.
Samuel S. Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, told the Times that gerrymandering—a term referring to the manipulation of district boundaries to favor the advantage of a single party— in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia could net Republicans an estimated five seats as the process of redrawing the congressional maps looms.
Most states across the country have begun their 2021 legislative sessions, during which at least a portion of these restrictive and expansive voting bills will be heard and potentially passed. The 2021 legislative session in Florida begins March 2, 2021.
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This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2021.