![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Sen.-Blaise-Ingoglia.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe Ultimate Cancel Act,\u201d<\/a> filed on Tuesday by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, would require the state\u2019s Division of Elections to \u201cimmediately cancel\u201d the filings of any political party whose platform had \u201cpreviously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bill, called S.B. 1248<\/a>, would require Florida officials to notify all registered voters who belong to any canceled parties that their party no longer exists. It would also change their voter registration to \u201cno party affiliation\u201d and \u201cprovide procedures\u201d for those voters to update their affiliation to \u201can active political party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bill would allow any canceled political parties to re-register with the Florida Department of State \u2014 but only under the condition that the party change its name to something \u201csubstantially different from the name of any other party previously registered\u201d with the agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposed legislation doesn\u2019t explicitly mention the Democratic Party. But the party, throughout much of the early and mid-1800\u2019s, supported slavery. Southern Democrats in particular supported protecting slavery in the U.S. and opposed civil rights reforms for decades following the Civil War. The party, of course, underwent a major realignment in the 19th century, and support for such policies has been absent from its platform or general discourse for many years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Florida Democrats said the intent of the bill was abundantly clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPresenting a bill that would disenfranchise 5 million voters is both unconstitutional and unserious. Under Ron DeSantis, Senator Ingoglia is using his office to push bills that are nothing more than publicity stunts instead of focusing on the issues that matter most to Floridians,\u201d the Florida Democratic Party said in a statement to NBC News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Florida Republicans hold a supermajority in the state Legislature. Its legislative sessions kick off March 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ingoglia, in a press release, suggested his bill was designed to get back at Democrats and \u201cleftist activists\u201d who he said had \u201cbeen trying to \u2018cancel\u2019 people and companies for things they have said or done in the past,\u201d including \u201cthe removal of statues and memorials, and the renaming of buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUsing this standard, it would be hypocritical not to cancel the Democrat Party itself for the same reason,\u201d Ingoglia said. \u201cSome people want to have \u2018uncomfortable conversations\u2019 about certain subjects. Let\u2019s have those conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ingoglia noted that the Democratic Party had \u201cadopted pro-slavery positions into their platforms\u201d during their national conventions in 1840, 1844, 1856, 1860, and 1864.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a series of tweets Tuesday, the state senator, who previously worked as the chairman of the Florida GOP, had also indicated his bill was designed to target Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a tweet<\/a> at Nikki Fried, Florida\u2019s former state agriculture commissioner who was elected over the weekend as the new chair<\/a> of the Florida Democratic Party, Ingoglia wrote that \u201cFlorida Dems should be thankful I\u2019m not asking them to return all the money they\u2019ve raised previously from their Jefferson\/Jackson Dinners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tweet was in reference to a name that Democrats had for years used as a label for annual fundraising dinners that were named to honor former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who both owned slaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many Democratic organizations<\/a> have in recent years changed<\/a> the names of those dinners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “The Ultimate Cancel Act” would “cancel” the filings of any party that “previously advocated for” slavery, which the Democratic Party did more than 150 years ago. A Republican in Florida’s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":57373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[2192],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57372"}],"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=57372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57375,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57372\/revisions\/57375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}