Florida legislature passes bill making it harder to vote by mail

With time running out before the end of this year’s legislative session, Florida lawmakers signed off Thursday night on a controversial elections bill that would make it harder for voters to cast ballots by mail.

Republican lawmakers backed away from more-stringent proposals contained in earlier versions of the elections overhaul. But the bill continued to draw fierce opposition from Democrats who said it would put up barriers to voting.

The measure (SB 90) focuses largely on vote-by-mail processes, mirroring in some aspects proposals being considered or passed by other GOP-led legislatures throughout the country. The proposals have come after a huge increase in the November elections of vote-by-mail ballots cast by Democrats nationwide, including in Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican leaders boasted about Florida’s smooth handling of the 2020 elections amid the coronavirus pandemic. But many of the changes included in the bill, which is now headed to DeSantis, are rooted in problems that arose in other states, including states that lacked Florida’s decades-long history of voting by mail.

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