Florida caught a lot of heat (rightly so) after the mess of an election in 2000 — pregnant chads, anyone? In the years since, the Sunshine State has cleaned up its act significantly.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) joined Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” to discuss the measures Florida takes to shore up election integrity — and why confidence in election results is essential.
Here are the key points of their exchange:
BARTIROMO: Your reaction to what you just heard from AG Merrick Garland — and walk us through your plans to ensure a fair election in Florida.
DESANTIS: Well, you pointed out on the chyron, Maria, we have banned ballot harvesting in the state of Florida and imposed stiff penalties — that should be done nationwide. Of course, we require photo ID in order to vote, we’ve banned the use of “Zucker Bucks,” and we’ve been aggressive at policing the voter rolls so that we have accurate voter rolls. And when people have run afoul of our election laws, this Election Crimes Unit we’ve created has been able to investigate, refer these people to prosecution — and you’ve had over 50 people, just in the last couple of years, that have been convicted of various types of voter fraud.
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[T]he Democrats oppose voter ID because they want there to be illegal votes — there’s no other reason. I think back when I was a naval officer, Maria — if you wanted to come on a Navy base, you had to show your ID. It didn’t matter whether you were black, white, rich, poor — it didn’t matter. If you show a photo ID, they know who you are, you can get in. If you don’t, you wouldn’t. If you were a foreigner with no ID, of course they wouldn’t let you in, and we see ID being used in so many other aspects of American life.
So, we’re doing it right in Florida. Some other Republican states, I think, are doing it right. There are some of these blue states, though, who do not do any of the safeguards that we’re doing here in Florida.
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Bartiromo then asked DeSantis why he thinks we continue to see these issues.
BARTIROMO: Officials in Oregon admitted on Friday that a data entry “mistake,” they claim, registered over 300 non-citizens to vote in the state since 2021 — the AP reported that, Governor. What do you want to see from each state, specifically, to target that issue?
DESANTIS: Well, all states should have policies that do not allow non-citizens to vote — and some of that, of course, illegal aliens, which have been in the country by the millions under Biden-Harris, but also we do have people that are foreigners that are here legally on a legal visa, they’re following the rules, but that doesn’t mean you get to vote in an American election. So, you have those safeguards in place.
This ballot harvesting that has been done in some of these states, I think, is totally outrageous. Now, if it’s legal in a state like Nevada, I think Republicans have no choice but to do it ourselves. We have to fight fire with fire. But you should not have anyone allowed to carry all these ballots and dump them into a drop box. Incidentally, in Florida, we don’t allow these drop boxes to be put in the middle of a city or something. You want to send in an absentee ballot, you can send it by mail, or you can drop it off at the elections office. That is what should be done.
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Bartiromo praised DeSantis for his adamance on the issue before asking him how much confidence he has that America “will see a safe and fair election.”
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DESANTIS: In Florida, I have incredibly high confidence — we had the best election in 2020. Remember all the chicanery that was going on there — it took days to count votes, sometimes even weeks. We counted, we processed 11-12 million votes in a matter of hours in the state of Florida. We reported the results, and that was that. We did even better in 2022, and we will do a good job in 2024.
How these other states are going — particularly the blue states — I’m not sure. But what I do know is that the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups have had four years to figure this out. So, my hope is…that they’re on the ground in these states, making sure we have a very transparent process, and that these votes are counted and the results are reported expeditiously. We can’t be in a situation where you don’t get the results for a few days. What is going on in those few days? Where are these votes coming from? Florida will report the results on election night — you can take that to the bank.
Bartiromo then noted the recent New York Times story titled “Harris or Trump? Once Again, Election Results Could Take a While,” asserting the likelihood that there will be no clear winner on election night and early returns could be misleading.
DESANTIS: It’s outrageous — and the thing you have is, you’ll have one candidate that may have a big lead because of election day votes, and then people wake up the next morning and say, “Oh, yeah, my candidate’s up 6 percent.” And then they keep counting the next day, and then they count more the next day, and then the lead flips. And so, obviously, what’s going on in that period? But even if there was nothing — even if it was all on the up and up — that destroys confidence in how these elections happen. So, any of those states that are doing what the New York Times is saying — they are absolutely killing public trust in these elections. Count the votes on election night and report the results. (Emphasis mine.)
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DeSantis is exactly right. There is zero reason why, in 2024, states should not be equipped to count votes on election night and report their results within hours, and the seeming loss of the ability to do so simply undermines Americans’ confidence in free and fair elections. No excuse for that.