Florida GOP lawmaker wants to end universal mail-in voting

ORLANDO, Fla. — A bill filed Friday night by former GOP Chair Blaise Ingoglia in the Florida Senate would eliminate universal voting by mail in the state, potentially wiping out a method used by millions and embraced by both parties until former President Trump’s false charges of fraud emerged in 2020.

Reaction from a Republican elections supervisor was swift.

“I’m sick and tired of this crap,” said Alan Hays, who runs Lake County elections.

“I am embarrassed, as a former state senator myself, that a current senator would offer such a nonsensical idea,” Hays added. “The Senate is supposed to be a body of leaders, not destroyers. And I see nothing good that I can say about this bill at all. … Shame on him.”

Ingoglia defended his proposal filed four days before the start of the regular session on Tuesday.

“I think voting in person is the safest way of voting,” Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, told the Orlando Sentinel Monday in Tallahassee. “Anything outside of that is going to be a risk. It’s just time to go back to basics.”

He said he realized his bill might put him at odds with some Republicans.

By the early 2010s, absentee voting in Florida was gradually changed so that anyone could cast a ballot that way.

Nearly 5 million people voted by mail in Florida in the 2020 general election at the height of the pandemic, and nearly 3 million voted by mail in the 2022 midterms.

Ingoglia’s bill, SB 1752 would reestablish the old absentee ballot rules.

Under the bill, a voter has to sign a certificate swearing he or she would be absent from their home county on election day or the early voting period, have a physical illness or disability preventing them from going to the polls, be a patient in a VA medical facility or be in jail awaiting trial.

Anyone who lies on the form could be convicted of a felony, fined up to $5,000 and imprisoned for up to five years for voter fraud.

In addition, a voter would have to submit a separate request to vote absentee by mail for every single election, including primaries.

An election distraction

Hays, who had been vocal in opposing parts of previous election bills, said the “foolish ideas” in the new bill would only be a distraction leading into the important elections this year.

“Not one of those legislators has any experience administering an election,” Hays said. “If they really want to mess things up and return Florida to being the laughingstock of the nation, keep on trying to sell this stuff. But until then, sit down, be quiet, and don’t mess with the election laws until you consult with the elections professionals.”

Bill Cowles, the Democratic elections supervisor in Orange County, said such a drastic change would harm Orlando-area voters.

“My concern would be that it’s totally contrary to our lifestyle today,” Cowles said. “Especially here in Central Florida, with the high dependency on employees working in the tourism industry, the retail industry, the restaurant industry, who don’t work a traditional schedule Monday through Friday [schedule], whose employers don’t let them have the day off or time off to go vote.”

In addition, Cowles said, cutting back on voting by mail could send potentially millions of voters back to polling places.

“Eventually, we’re going to get to the point where you’re going to have long lines and waiting,” he said.

‘Apparently, that’s not enough’

Absentee voting was pushed heavily by Republicans in 2000, with Gov. Jeb Bush telling voters in a mailer,“Vote from the comfort of your home.” Voting rules were gradually expanded over the next decade.

“It was perceived, at least in Florida, that vote by mail, no-excuse voting was benefiting Republicans,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida.

But mail-in ballots became a partisan issue in 2020, when nearly 700,000 more Democrats voted by mail amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That same year, Trump began slamming the practice.

“Mail ballots – they cheat,” Trump said in April 2020. “People cheat. Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they’re cheaters. They go and collect them. They’re fraudulent in many cases.”

But Trump voted by mail himself in Palm Beach County in the GOP primary. Asked why, he said, “Because I’m allowed to.”

Trump’s opposition to voting by mail only increased after his defeat that November, and much of the party started to move with him.

“You see [Gov. Ron] DeSantis and Republicans in the Legislature losing interest in mail balloting, because now you’re seeing large numbers of Democrats,” McDonald said.

Ingoglia denied Monday that his bill was in reaction to increased Democratic mail-ins in 2020, though he was among the first to call for increased restrictions following that year’s election.

He was one of the main speakers at the February 2021 press conference at which DeSantis announced the first of what became an annual series of bills tightening rules for voting by mail and other election methods.

While he called Florida’s election system a “ray of light” for the country, he also called for banning most of the drop boxes that allowed voters to drop off mail-in ballots at polling sites, despite having originally drafted the legislation allowing them.

Since then, further election laws cut back on the amount of time a vote-by-mail request would last from four years to two years, as well as adding restrictions on who can drop off a ballot for family members.

In the 2022 election, Democrats’ mail-in voting advantage in Florida over Republicans fell by almost 75% from two years earlier.

“Apparently, that’s not enough,” McDonald said. “I would have expected the Republicans to at least wait to see what happens in 2024 and what the effect of the new laws were going to be before taking another step. But apparently that’s not the case.”

McDonald said he could see DeSantis, who has become more critical of voting by mail over the past few years, backing the bill.

“I don’t think that this is just coming from the Legislature,” McDonald said. “I think this is coming from higher up.”

DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Some very difficult times’

Hays, though, said he was hopeful the bill would not pass.

“I personally cannot imagine this bill passing, if it even gets heard in one committee,” Hays said. “But it is absolutely absurd. And as an elections official, it’s insulting.”

State Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, introduced the bill that finally eliminated the “absentee” language in the vote-by-mail law in 2015. She was disappointed but not surprised by Ingoglia’s new bill.

“What he has done systematically throughout the years is to introduce legislation to make it more difficult for people to vote,” Thompson said. “And I think in this climate, whether we see it get on the agenda and see it discussed. I just couldn’t say. But we’re living in some very difficult times.”

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