Univision falsely claimed not once, but twice, this week that Florida’s new voting law will cut early voting times.
This is just not true. Repeating a falsehood does not make it any less false.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis [signed] the controversial SB 90 bill, which seeks to curtail access to voting by mail, as has been proposed by other Republican-led, Trump-supporting states, with the baseless [claims of] election fraud,” said Univision anchor Aylen Del Toro.
She adds [emphasis added], “They’ll verify your signature, which means that voters must have a signature on file at [their local supervisor of elections office]. Now, those who want to vote by mail must request their ballot each election cycle. It creates limits upon who can collect and return a voter’s ballot. It bars private financing of elections and expands partisan observer power during the counting of the ballots in particular. On the other hand, it restricts the use of dropboxes during the early voting period, which used to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
The new bill is “restrictive” only if one considers the pandemic-era emergency voting measures (i.e., the 24/7 dropboxes) the norm, not the exception.
Earlier this week, Del Toro made similarly false claims about the bill.
“The Florida Legislature passed a controversial election bill that adds restrictions to the manner in which to vote,” she said. “They will add new ID and signature requirements for mail-in voting. They will also limit who can send your mail ballot.”
Del Toro adds [emphasis added], “On the other hand, they cut access to dropboxes by limiting early voting hours. Dropboxes will be staffed exclusively by supervisor of elections employees. And they will establish and publish dropbox locations 30 days prior to an election.”
“It is very important to point out that these measures will have a greater impact on elderly and low-income voters, minorities, as well as persons with disabilities,” she said, failing to provide anything to back this claim.
For your consideration, here’s a good breakdown of what the Florida bill does, via Reuters:
The law also gives partisan election observers more power to raise objections and requires people offering voters assistance to stay at least 150 feet (45 meters) away from polling places, an increase from the previous 100-foot (30-meter) radius.
It’s not “restrictive” to draw down measures that were enacted because of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic. Someone apparently needs to tell this to the people at Univision.
