No, you won’t have to use four envelopes to vote by mail this fall — an amendment approved by a committee in the Florida House on Monday stripped that requirement from elections regulation legislation being pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in this election year.
Instead — and bringing HB 7061 in line with a version moving through the Senate — the Appropriations Committee accepted an amendment that would require the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections, to study how to use various forms of identification to make balloting more secure and report back on Jan. 1.
The measure retains plenty to curdle the blood of voting-rights activists, including felony penalties for “ballot harvesting” — meaning delivering mail-in ballots belonging to anyone except the single voter — long employed by get-out-the-vote efforts but demonized by DeSantis.
The maximum penalty for voter-registration organizations for filing registration forms late would rise from the maximum $1,000 under existing law to $50,000.
Additionally, the bill would create an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State and designate special agents to investigate elections fraud within each of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s seven regional offices.
Bill sponsor Daniel Perez, a Republican from Miami-Dade County, insisted he doesn’t want to impede voting — merely to provide money and people to investigate voter fraud.
“If that is something that we cannot agree on in this...
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