Don’t fix what’s not broken in state’s election law

A fairly-run election with record numbers of voters fulfills most people’s idea of a good thing, but with some it’s like sunshine to a vampire.

Republican politicians in Florida and other states they control have filed more than a hundred bills to make voting, especially by mail, more difficult than it was in the recent elections, when they lost the White House and Senate and fell just short of retaking the House of Representatives.

Their fears of what happens when more people vote came true in Georgia, which chose President Joe Biden and elected two Democratic senators.

Now, the Georgia Senate has approved a crackdown on mail voting, including a provision requiring applicants to submit copies of state-approved photo IDs. Another pending bill bans early voting on Sunday.

The Brennan Center for Justice last month counted 106 voter suppression bills in 28 states, including Florida. That’s three times as many as in the same time frame last year.

This goes beyond the usual dirty politics. These renewed assaults continue to disparage the election process by pretending that new restrictions are necessary. They cater to the subversive designs of ex-president Donald Trump, who is still flaunting the flagrant lie that he actually won the 2020 election.

That colossal lie produced the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which was in every sense an insurrection aimed at preventing the Congress from certifying that Biden was the president-elect.

Every piece of state legislation that implies any truth in Trump’s Big Lie undermines the Biden administration and fuels Trump’s ambition to run again.

Considering that Florida’s election went especially well, putting to rest its mortifying reputation for blunders, confusion and late counts, the state’s leaders should be proud rather than trying to fix what’s not broken. There hasn’t been a single credible allegation of fraud.

But no, Gov. Ron DeSantis is putting his shoulder to Sen. Dennis Baxley’s SB

90, which is transparently aimed at there being fewer mail-in ballots in succeeding elections.

Baxley, R-Ocala, is one of those Florida legislators whose name on a bill is fair warning that there’s something wrong with it.

In this instance, his bill is not only unnecessary but burdensome to potentially millions of Florida voters and to the 67 county election supervisors.

Presently, voters can submit requests for mail ballots for the next two general elections. So, someone who applied last year would be good for the election in 2022. An application submitted this year would be good for the 2022 and 2024 cycles.

But Baxley and DeSantis want to limit that to one election at a time. Everyone would have to submit a new application for every election.

Published reports say Democrats already lead Republicans by 812,474 mail-ballot applications for the 2022 election, in which the Republican governor will be challenged. That explains SB 90.

Bad as that is, DeSantis wants even more, including a ban on counties accepting grants from private organizations for get-out-the-vote campaigns.

Of the nearly 4.9 million people who chose to vote by mail rather than risk contracting Covid-19 at the polls last year, more than 2.19 million were registered Democrats compared to about 1.5 million Republicans. Those mail ballots represented about 45% of Democratic voters compared to 31% of Republicans.

Even so, the Florida Democrats lost seats in the Legislature and in Congress, and saw Donald Trump carry the state once again. Baxley, where’s the beef ?

Here as elsewhere, Republican lawmakers are cloaking their voter suppression bills in the pretense of simply wanting to assure the public that the process is unreproachable.

There is indeed a problem in that regard. According to one recent poll, only 17 percent of Trump’s voters believe Biden’s win was legitimate.

But it’s Trump and his Republican echo chambers who are responsible for that dangerous degree of mistrust. Trump’s campaign to disparage the election began long before anyone had cast a ballot. It continues still, with DeSantis’s help.

One part of Baxley’s bill is meritorious. It codifies the DeSantis order that let the canvassing of mail ballots begin last year as soon as counties finish testing the counting machines, which gave them from 35 to 40 days before the election to do it, instead of the maximum 22 in state law. It’s why Florida’s results were known shortly after the polls closed.

However, the good provision is wrapped in a poison pill.

PHIL COALE/AP Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, is one of those Florida legislators whose name on a bill is fair warning that there’s something wrong with it. And so it is with SB 90, his proposal to restrict mail-in ballots, even though Florida had not a single credible allegation of fraud in the 2020 election.