{"id":55643,"date":"2022-10-13T13:58:28","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T17:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=55643"},"modified":"2022-10-13T13:58:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T17:58:37","slug":"desantis-issues-order-making-voting-easier-in-impacted-counties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/10\/desantis-issues-order-making-voting-easier-in-impacted-counties\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis issues order making voting easier in impacted counties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order Thursday to provide flexibility for elections officials in the Florida counties most severely impacted by Hurricane Ian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Among the changes are extending early voting in an expanded number of locations through Election Day; making it easier to have an absentee ballot sent to an address other than the one on file at an elections office; allowing elections officials to consolidate or move Election Day polling locations and expanding the pool of eligible poll workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The executive order only applies to Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, all of which were heavily impacted by Ian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elections officials in the impacted counties were pushing for the executive order, as were voting rights organizations. A similar order was issued after Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The provisions in the executive order impacting absentee voting are among the most notable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Florida law, a voter must request in writing to have a mail ballot sent to an address other than the one on file at a county elections office. The governor\u2019s executive order would allow that request to be made by phone, something Lee County\u2019s supervisor of elections requested because many voters are displaced and could have difficulty submitting something in writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized mail voting, making unsubstantiated allegations that it is rife with fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican officials in Florida and around the country recently have been moving to tighten restrictions on mail ballots, so it\u2019s notable that Florida is loosening absentee ballot rules, even in an emergency situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secretary of State Cord Byrd, the state\u2019s chief elections officer, said the executive order will help ensure Florida’s election \u201cis administered as efficiently and securely as possible across the state and in the counties that received the heaviest damage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allowing early voting locations to stay open through Election Day allows counties to create super voting sites and temporarily do away with the traditional practice of voting in neighborhood polling locations on Election Day. It also gives counties three additional days of early voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee County plans to use 12 super voting locations on Election Day instead of 97 neighborhood polling locations, many of which were destroyed or are unusable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner said he\u2019s not sure he\u2019ll need to have early voting locations open through Election Day. He expects to largely run Election Day voting as normal, with voters going to their neighborhood polling locations, but is glad to have the flexibility to change things if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt gives us flexibility as we move forward to deal with the impacts of the hurricane and those voters who were impacted, and to ensure that those individuals and all individuals in our county have the ability to cast a ballot,\u201d Turner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting rights advocates in Florida have called for DeSantis to do more to ensure voting access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVoters in any storm-affected county in Florida, not just the three where local elections officials asked for help, deserve extended time and resources to adequately cast their ballots,\u201d said All Voting is Local Florida spokesperson Michael Krumholtz. \u201cThe state must consider the needs of voters across the state, not just the needs of supervisors of elections in a few counties.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krumholtz said the governor\u2019s directive \u201copens the door for poll workers who haven\u2019t been trained in two years to work at voting locations in these counties\u201d and that local elections officials should ensure that changes to voting locations \u201cdo not create new burdens for Black and Hispanic communities to cast a ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Voting is Local Florida was among several voting rights groups that penned a letter this week<\/a> with several voting access recommendations to DeSantis administration officials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three counties covered by DeSantis\u2019 executive order are all GOP strongholds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis carried Charlotte by 26 percentage points, Lee by 22 and Sarasota by 9. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The region\u2019s strong Republican tilt makes it essential to the GOP\u2019s playbook for winning statewide races in Florida. Republicans need to have big margins of victory in this part of the state to offset losses in Democratic-leaning areas, something the GOP has been highly successful at over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order Thursday to provide flexibility for elections officials in the Florida counties most severely impacted by Hurricane Ian. Among the changes are extending early voting in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":52449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1818],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55643"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55643"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55645,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55643\/revisions\/55645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}