Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is continuing his arbitrary-ass war on accessible voting because, well...I honestly have no idea. Well, actually I do: The Republican game plan to disenfranchise non-Republican voters is pretty well-documentedโbut for DeSantis, voter suppression is like his version of porn addiction. But blocking felons from retaining their voting rights after they have served their time doesnโt appear to be enough for the Larry Flynt of Brian Kemps to get his rocks off anymore, so now heโs typing โdown with mail-in votingโ into the Republican Pornhub tab. (I should probably end this analogy here before I get really gross.)
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NBC News reports that DeSantis gave a speech Friday in which he bragged that Florida had โthe most transparent and efficient election anywhere in the countryโ last year. Despite this claimโwhich he presented without pointing to anything that backs it up because thatโs the Republican wayโDeSantis still believes more restrictions on voting are necessary.
From NBC:
DeSantis proposed a spate of new election laws on Friday, calling for the state to limit the use of ballot drop boxes (the governor said ballots should be mailed or dropped off at election offices), as well as requiring voters to request mail ballots more frequently than they already do, which is roughly every two years. He also called for prohibiting ballot collection.
โWe did it right in 2020, we obviously gotta look and make sure weโre doing it better,โ he said. Trump beat Joe Biden in Florida by nearly 400,000 more votes while the state saw more than 9 million mail-in and in-person ballots returned โ up 41 percent from the 2016 election.
He called for real-time reporting of voter turnout data, as well as codifying that unsolicited ballots wonโt be mailed to voters in Florida โ something he acknowledged the state already doesnโt do.
DeSantis said he would ask lawmakers to take up his proposals this year. Already, Republican lawmakers in Florida have introduced a bill requiring voters to request mail ballots each year.
Imagine being this committed to coming up with solutions for problems that donโt exist.
For now, Iโll suspend my suspicion that DeSantis thinks Trumpโs win in Florida, in and of itself, is proof that the stateโs election officials โdid it right in 2020"โbecause itโs the โwe obviously gotta look and make sure weโre doing it betterโ part that really gets me. How is it obvious that Florida needs to improve after already achieving a perfect score (which it gave itself via DeSantisโ unearned hubris)?
โThey seem to be addressing a problem that isnโt there,โ Eliza Sweren-Becker, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, told NBC. โWe donโt have a voter fraud problem, itโs phenomenally scarce.
โThe proposals that Gov. DeSantis has offered are consistent with a trend that weโre seeing across the country with state lawmakers trying to make it harder for voters to cast their ballots, particularly in the context of mail voting,โ she continued.
Sweren-Becker is right, of course. Report after report after reportโincluding one from the Brennan Centerโshows that significant voter fraud in America is as mythical as DeSantisโ competence and integrity.
Hell, even Donald Trumpโthe Ron Jeremy of voter fraud propaganda (yeah, Iโm doing the porn thing again)โcommissioned a voter fraud task force in 2018, but then dismantled it after it came up with nada to substantiate the corrupt election claims Trump had already run wild with.
And thatโs what this is really about. Itโs about keeping as few people voting as possible because thatโs how Republicans win, but itโs also about using Trumpโs old wrinkly tangerine ballsack as a sex swing because voter fraud propaganda porn just isnโt hardcore enough otherwise. (I told you it would get super gross.)
My point is, despite Trump being ousted from the presidency...and Twitter...and probably Melaniaโs speed-dial, his legacy of delusion and moral corruption continues through his most loyal supporters who are still in office.
And that damn sure includes DeSantisโ horny ass.
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