Election laws aren’t broken and don’t need fixing

After the 2020 election, Gov. Ron DeSantis tweeted: “Florida is a model for the rest of the nation.” By mid-February he said: “We should not rest on our laurels.” It is hard to dispute that something can always be better, but sometimes “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a more compelling argument — especially in this instance.

In an effort to tamp down questionable claims of voter fraud, bills working their way through the Republican-controlled Legislature would make it more difficult to vote by mail and eliminate ballot drop boxes at supervisors’ offices, among other onerous modifications. These measures would have disproportionate impacts on the elderly, students, and under-served communities.

As the bill currently stands in the Senate, two people who are not family members can collect ballots from someone unable to travel to the elections office. This is supposed to thwart ballot harvesting. But what’s to stop people from putting multiple ballots in the mail?

The proposed Senate bill (SB 90) also raises privacy concerns. The section dealing with ballots that cannot be tabulated electronically due to being damaged or unreadable would mean that upon further examination, “dozens of people (would) be close enough to see personal identifying information,” according to the News Service of Florida.

Another requirement, regarding that ballot signatures must match previous ones made with a writing utensil, the News Service reports that the bill risks disenfranchising “hundreds of thousands of Floridians whose signatures were recorded on electronic tablets when they received their driver’s licenses.”

Last but by no means least, these changes are opposed by supervisors of Elections, the very same folks on whom the governor recently lavished praise. One would think they have a good idea what works and what doesn’t. These measures will require counties to spend a lot of money to educate voters regarding changes to vote by mail.

Do we really need this added expense? How about spending money on something that’s actually broken? There’s plenty of that to go around, as those hit hardest by Covid can attest.

Nancy Chanin, Delray Beach