DeSantis Keeps FL Election Planners Guessing On What Rules Will Be Relaxed For Pandemic
When local elections officials in Florida sounded the alarm that they needed the governor to make changes to the state’s election policies in light of the pandemic, they put in bold and underlined type that they wanted action from him “as soon as possible.”
Nearly three weeks later, they’re still waiting to find out from him what, if any, of their requests the governor is willing to grant.
Across the country, election officials are scrambling to scale up their vote-by-mail programs, predicting that many voters, under stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the virus, will prefer to avoid polling places. At the same time, officials are figuring out how to make in-person voting safer for those who still use the option during the pandemic. In some ways, Florida was better positioned than most other states, because a third of its electorate already votes by mail.
So when its association of supervisors of elections sent DeSantis a letter on April 7 warning that a full mail-in election wouldn’t be possible and asking him for assistance, it was taken as a sign that election officials in most of the country faced steep challenges.
While Florida’s next statewide election isn’t until August, the supervisors association said that staffing and logistical decisions were being made now. They’ve suggested that the governor, via executive order, could relax a handful of the state’s elections rules. The tweaks would help them handle the influx of absentee voting they’re expecting, while adjusting in-person voting in a way that will help them deal with the staffing shortages they anticipate and prevent individual polling locations from.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/florida-desantis-covid-19-election-requests
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