Goodbye, Ron. Florida voters will not miss you.
When he leaves office on Jan. 5, 2027, Ron DeSantis’ legacy in the Sunshine State will forever be tied to being one of the worst governors for voting rights in state history.
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DeSantis is capping off his eight years in Tallahassee by using his election police force to make highly publicized arrests. September’s gross spectacle of politically motivated arrests right before a major election could intimidate Black and Brown eligible voters who face confusing rules regarding citizenship and rights restoration. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is the second time DeSantis has done it.
Under DeSantis, Florida became the first state in the nation to create an election police force, dedicating millions of taxpayer dollars to combat the fairy tale of mass illegal voting that election deniers have amplified to extraordinary proportions. The results have been telling. The state’s own 2023 report noted just four cases that resulted in sentencing from more than 1,300 complaints brought to the Office of Election Crimes and Security. Faced with a lack of actual election crimes to prosecute, the office had to broaden its focus to petition gathering and other activities to justify its existence.
Election police also arrested 20 voters after the 2022 primary, the vast majority of whom were Black. At least several of those charges were later thrown out. County election officials had sent voter registration cards to people with prior convictions, leading those voters to assume they were allowed to vote in the primary. The impact the election police had was immediately made clear: people of color were disproportionately targeted, and it created a sense of fear for eligible voters casting their ballots.
DeSantis also made national news earlier this year for redrawing congressional maps early, acquiescing to Donald Trump’s call for mid-decade redistricting that would give Republicans an advantage as part of one of the most extreme cases of gerrymandering in U.S. history.
As they did in 2022, DeSantis and his legislative allies again sought to diminish Black voting strength, this time by breaking up districts in Tampa Bay, Central Florida, and South Florida. These policies are attempts to limit the power that Black voters have at the polls and ultimately keep all Floridians from having access to the free and democratic elections that its people deserve.
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This followed years of DeSantis chipping away at popular voting methods like vote-by-mail and drop boxes. Through a law passed in 2021, Florida has now forced voters to renew their absentee or vote-by-mail status after every election cycle, or every two years. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a sharp decline in mail-in ballot requests across the state and has left voters confused as to why their ballots aren’t showing up.
Laws that DeSantis has backed have imposed fundamental restrictions on these voting options while also crippling the power of third-party voter registration organizations. Groups instrumental for decades in enrolling voters from historically excluded communities can now face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if they submit forms late or to the wrong county.
Florida has seen enough of his constant attacks on voting rights, but the rest of the country may soon get a closer look at his election-denier approach as he sets up a national organization to replicate Florida’s election-rule model in other states.
For Florida voters and election workers, the end of the DeSantis era brings a new hope that voting rights can begin to be recouped in the Sunshine State. At the very least, the state needs leaders who won’t try to weaken elections at every turn.
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It’s time for a new future where voters can regain their power.
Brad Ashwell is the Florida state director of All Voting is Local Action.