Republican state legislators in Tallahassee are back to their old tricks, plotting new ways to make it harder for people to vote in Florida.
Despite Florida’s track record of reliably rock-solid elections, Republicans keep demanding changes. They now want to require voters to verify citizenship before they vote, despite little evidence of non-citizens voting.
Republican Rep. Berny Jacques of Seminole sponsored HB 985, which requires proof of citizenship to vote. It also eliminates the use of a college student ID or retirement center ID to verify a voter’s identity.
There’s just one goal in mind here: Stop people from voting, especially demographics that tend to vote for Democrats.
Two related Republican-sponsored bills, HB 991 and SB 1334, would also require proof of citizenship to vote. The one piece of good news here is that the nine-week session starts Week 2 on Tuesday, and none of these bills has been scheduled for a public hearing.
Voter intimidation
As usual, elected county election supervisors, Republicans and Democrats alike, are not clamoring for these changes.
Also as usual, Republicans have provided no documented proof of wideapread fraud to justify the need for such a law.
This is voter intimidation, pure and simple. Lightly staffed county elections offices could be overwhelmed, working overtime to verify the citizenship status of millions of voters who are already registered.
Voter fraud exists, but let’s keep it in perspective. The latest annual report by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Office of Election Crimes and Security cited 170 “likely non-citizens” who were referred to law enforcement for voting, or trying to vote, in 2024.
Of course they should be prosecuted. But in a state of 13.5 million voters, they amount to about one-thousandth of 1 percent.
Serious flaws
The nonpartisan group Vote Riders says only four states require proof of citizenship for people to vote: Arizona, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Wyoming. In all, 96% of U.S. voters are not required to prove citizenship.
“Citizenship databases have been shown to be seriously flawed,” Vote Riders said. “These back-end ‘verification’ systems are notoriously unreliable and error-prone, especially for naturalized citizens, people who change their names after getting married or divorced, or anyone with hyphens or spaces in their names, which can show up differently in government databases.”
Here’s more: HB 991 and SB 1334 require all voters except those with disabilities to vote by “pen or marker.” Why?
This might seem innocuous, but county election supervisors say it would abolish the popular touch-screen voting method known as ExpressVote, which supporters say cuts printing costs and waiting times at early voting sites. Its larger font size is popular with older voters, and it greatly reduces so-called overvotes, in which voters choose more than one candidate in a race, often by mistake, spoiling their ballots.
One election law priority by Florida election supervisors.
Palm Beach County invested heavily in hundreds of ExpressVote terminals after vote-counting problems in 2018. Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link calls the system “wildly popular” with voters. “Everybody likes it,” she said.
Instead of deviously plotting to reduce voter turnout, legislators should adopt steps to make voting easier, such as allowing voters to maintain permanent vote-by-mail requests.
The changes are recommended by a statewide election supervisors association, of which Link is president. The supervisors want the state to restore a small box on mail ballot forms that allows voters to receive mail ballots for future elections.
The Democrats’ ideas
Democratic lawmakers have filed their own set of voting proposals. This is the third straight year they are offering the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Florida Voting Rights Act, named for a former NAACP leader and his wife who fought for voting rights, especially for minority voters.
They were both killed when their home in Brevard County was firebombed on Christmas Day, 1951.
The Democrats propose permanent vote-by-mail requests, better language access to voting materials and automatic voter registration for eligible Floridians when they visit a state driver’s license office.
Just as important, their bills (SB 1598 and HB 1419) would roll back some of the Republicans’ worst actions, such as restricting vote-by-mail drop boxes and imposing severe fines on paperwork errors by groups registering voters.
Democrats want a lot more people voting in Florida. That’s one reason why Republicans won’t support their ideas in the current session.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/01/17/back-to-their-old-tricks-punishing-voters-editorial/
