Mark Lane: Another Florida elections bill with more obstacles

The 2020 general election in Florida was surprisingly smooth, especially given this state's history. The count moved fast. Gov. Ron DeSantis praised all involved, took a certain amount of credit himself, and vowed to change the process because an election like that cannot be allowed to happen again.

No, that didn’t make sense. Yet every year since, the Legislature has agreed with the governor and passed new, more restrictive, and often confusing election law changes. This year legislators are at it again.

Almost halfway through the 90-day legislative session, a 98-page elections bill (SB 7050) was dropped in the Senate and, within a day of its surprise debut, waved through its first committee stop by a party-line vote after minutes and minutes of discussion. The House version got a quickie party-line committee vote on Thursday.

Another insta-bill in a session full of base-pleasing done-on-the-fly enactments. This is the DeSantis Era Florida Legislature we're talking about here, not a deliberative body. Any memo from the governor's office can be swiftly transformed into legislation with details to be worked out later.

A big target for this year's elections bill is third-party efforts to register voters. These are groups that go out to where potential voters are, get them to fill out registration forms, and then turn the forms in at the local supervisor of elections offices. Often these are groups like NAACP and the League of Women Voters. Church groups, fraternities and sororities also hold registration drives. These are the people with clipboards standing in parking lots working to extend democracy.

More: Campaign finance, harassment of election workers. What's in Florida Senate Bill 7050?

More: Republican senators move 98-page Florida election bill 24 hours after it becomes public

The bill would increase fines on these groups for rule violations and give them less time to get voter registration forms to supervisors of elections. It would require groups to register with the state every election cycle, not once and done as things stand now. Almost 2,000 groups currently are registered to do third-party voter registration. Most are smaller community volunteer groups that are already getting discouraged by the previous batches of bureaucratic obstacles.

Political party organizations would be exempted from the re-registration requirements. Natch.

Voter drives like these have been especially effective in minority communities and a greater proportion of minority voters get their first voter cards this way. But "Florida has a grotesque history of racial discrimination," as U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker noted in a court ruling on the 2021 elections bill. "When Black voters tended to favor a form of voting, or when a change in the law opened more opportunities for Black Floridians to vote, the Legislature has acted to restrict those opportunities." And since Black voters often register this way, tighter rules have been proposed for three years running.

Oh, and look at this: many Black Churches hold Souls to the Polls events on the Sunday before Election Day during early voting. The bill would allow elections officials to use the 16th day before an election instead of the second day before an election.

Strictly an administrative matter. Nothing to see here.

Another group that legislators feel is voting too often is young people. New rules require first-time voters ― read young people, especially college students ― to vote in person the first time unless they can meet new ID requirements. And yes, college IDs would not be good enough.

Yet another section would allow political committees to file fewer reports less often before qualifying time. Something to be welcomed by big-money donors who do not wish to draw too much attention to themselves.

Generally speaking, this bill as it stands now ― I can't wait to see the last-minute tweaks it gets ― actually is not as bad as the past two years of what politicians like to call "election reform." But it continues all the same tendencies: more roadblocks for legitimate voters, more bureaucratic hurdles for local elections officials to endure, and more ways to make voting just a little harder for groups that have the temerity to vote for the wrong candidates.

 Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: Florida lawmakers looks to make voting more difficult - again