A dithering DeSantis angers Florida elections experts

This never should have happened.

The men and women managing the most challenging election in Florida history wanted a bit of help from Gov. Ron DeSantis to make sure that democracy itself doesn’t become a victim of COVID-19. But for weeks, the governor ignored an April 7 request by county election supervisors that the state support voting changes in response to the pandemic.

At the same time, Florida inexplicably refused to apply for $20.3 million in federal election grants, money offered to states under the CARES Act, a pandemic relief program passed by Congress. Most states made a stampede for this precious money at a time when state budgets were being decimated by the economic collapse, but not Florida. Course not.

April became May. DeSantis continued to blow off the 67 independent election experts. Fed up, they sent a second letter Wednesday. “Our request for executive action cannot wait any longer,” they wrote.

Later in the day, the state’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State Laurel Lee, put out a statement that Florida is “formalizing our request,” which is delayed pending a strategy for finding $4 million in state matching money to get those federal dollars. Democrats scoffed at the idea that in a state of emergency, when DeSantis alone is calling the shots, an AWOL Legislature suddenly has to be consulted on finding $4 million in a $93 billion budget. This argument simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

Florida is one of four states that had not applied, and it is the laggard with the most COVID-19 deaths. It’s also the only known state in this dubious group to be targeted by the Russians for interference in the last presidential election in 2016.

By refusing to act, DeSantis raises new questions about how serious he is about ensuring a smooth election. He also handed more ammunition to Democrats, who claim his foot-dragging is part of a broader strategy to suppress voter turnout, which would help Republicans.

“DeSantis’ dithering and hand-wringing needs to stop,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. “These questions can all be answered with leadership on his part.”

This problem runs deeper than one unanswered letter. The prolonged inaction sends an unmistakable message that DeSantis doesn’t consider election planning a high priority. That’s a far cry from this time last year, when the governor, recalling the Russian cyber-security scare, said he would do “everything in our power” to protect election integrity.

From the supervisors’ perspective, Lee is not the problem. The group’s new president, Hillsborough County’s straighttalking Craig Latimer, said Lee has been “responsive and available” at all times. That suggests a serious bureaucratic bottleneck between the state elections office and the governor’s young staff, some of them lacking the savvy or experience to navigate internal bureaucratic politics. That’s not unique to this administration, but it must be fixed.

After eight mostly dysfunctional years with former Gov. Rick Scott and his elections chief, Ken Detzner, county supervisors had high hopes that things would be much better with this administration.

Lee, a former prosecutor and circuit judge, has worked diligently to improve relations from the past, only to find that DeSantis’ indifference to the supervisors’ concerns makes it harder for things to improve.

Just two years ago, supervisors were furious that Detzner refused to apply for federal cyber-security money. In a silly drama that played out at an elections conference in Fort Lauderdale, Scott overruled him and the state belatedly got its money.

DeSantis might have drawn an instructive lesson from that fiasco, especially as we prepare for the most important presidential election of our lives.

As of Thursday, Florida’s request for the new federal money had still not appeared on the website of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, which distributes the money. DeSantis has still not addressed the concerns in the counties’ April letter, including expanding early voting sites and optional early voting days (from 14 to 22), easier relocation of polling places, and allowing more time to send out mail ballots.

Time will increasingly be a factor. The first vote-by-mail ballots for the primary will go out on July 4, and counties are expanding voting by mail because it will be much tougher and slower to hold traditional in-person voting in an age of social distancing. As the campaign season intensifies, there’s likely to be more votingrelated litigation, in addition to the ongoing struggle over felons with financial obligations exercising the right to vote under Amendment 4.

All 67 counties have been ordered by DeSantis to provide voting materials in English and Spanish, and the virus has made some poll workers increasingly leery of interacting with strangers.

We know America waited too long to react to the deadly threat posed by the coronavirus. There are already too many obstacles standing in the way of a smooth election. DeSantis didn’t have to add another.

Steve Bousquet