The White House blasted Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing an election reform bill that it claims restricts voting access.
Florida’s new law is another reason why the Senate should pass the sweeping 800-page election overhaul legislation approved by the House in March, according to White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
“Florida is moving in the wrong direction,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “We need to be working to make sure voting is secure and convenient, and that’s part of why we need laws like H.R. 1.”
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Jean-Pierre defended the 2020 election as one of the most secure in U.S. history despite the uptick in mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic. She added there was “no legitimate reason” for bills that “make it harder to vote that’s built on a lie.”
“The only reason to change the rules right now is if you don’t like who voted. And that should be out of bounds,” she said.
DeSantis signed a bill Thursday morning during an appearance on Fox & Friends that updates voter identification requirements for mail-in ballots and regulates how absentee ballots are received and returned. It also empowers partisan poll watchers and limits private election funding. Unlike other states, Florida had a system for mail-in voting before the pandemic.
Former President Donald Trump, who has complained that the reliance on mail-in ballots last year undermined the integrity of the 2020 election, won Florida by 3 percentage points.
Florida is the latest in a slew of Republican-governed states to reassess its election laws, such as Georgia and Texas. Georgia’s iteration prompted a backlash from locally based businesses, including Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola.
H.R. 1, numbered as the House Democrats’ first piece of legislation of the 2020-2021 congressional session to signal its importance to the conference, would create a nationwide automatic voter registration program, require states to provide no-excuse mail-in ballot options, and would permit felons who have completed prison sentences to vote. It would similarly mandate that certain politically active groups, including 401(c)3 “dark money” nonprofit organizations, disclose donors who give $10,000 or more.
H.R. 1 faces significant challenges in the Senate, where it needs the support of 10 Republicans to clear the chamber. West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has already indicated he will not back the bill in its current form.
“Every vote should be accessible, it should be secure, and it should be fair. That’s the responsibility we have, and [if] the states are subverting that, then we should put guard rails on it,” the centrist Democrat said last week.
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Manchin has endorsed a raft of narrower reforms, such as expanding early voting to at least 15 days and two weekend days in every state.
