Florida governor signs voting restriction law

Mr DeSantis said Florida had run the smoothest election in the country

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a leading 2024 White House contender, has signed a bill tightening voting rules in his pivotal presidential swing state.

The new law restricts the use of drop boxes for postal ballots, adds new ID rules, and requires voters to reapply for mail-in ballots more regularly.

Republican legislators in dozens of states have pursued such bills after former President Donald Trump's false claims that there was widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election.

Texas' Republican-controlled statehouse advanced a similar bill on Thursday.

Florida and Texas are among the largest and fastest-growing states in the US, and the new voting laws could have far reaching consequences in future elections.

Democrats argue the measures are designed to suppress votes, though Republicans maintain the legislation aims to protect election integrity.

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Postal ballot restrictions

In March, Georgia's Republican governor provoked uproar and threats of corporate boycotts after he passed a voting law that Democrats warned would disenfranchise black voters.

The bill tightened postal ballot ID requirements and restricted use of voting drop-boxes, but also expanded early voting access in most of Georgia's counties.

On Thursday, Mr DeSantis staged a live bill-signing ceremony broadcast exclusively on Fox News' morning show.

Florida's new voting law also gives partisan election observers more latitude to raise objections. And it requires people who offer voters food and drink to keep a 150ft (45m) distance from polling stations, up from 100ft previously.

Back in February, Mr DeSantis said Florida had "held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country".

But although there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, he said new limits on postal ballots were needed to safeguard election integrity.

Minutes after he signed the law on Thursday, three civil rights groups sued Florida to try to block the new measure.

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"The legislation has a deliberate and disproportionate impact on elderly voters, voters with disabilities, students and communities of color," said Patricia Brigham, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

Florida Republicans have tended to use postal ballots slightly more than Democrats in past elections. But in November, state records show that Democrats submitted about 700,000 more mail-in ballots than Republicans.

The turnaround followed months of claims by Mr Trump that postal voting was rife with fraud. He still won that state because large numbers of Republican voters turned out in person on election day.

In Texas, the bill was passed by the lower legislative chamber after a lengthy debate that went into the early hours of Friday morning.

It still must be passed by the state senate before going to Republican Governor Greg Abbott's desk to be signed into law.

Rising star

Some Republican operatives are reportedly worried that the new measures could backfire in Florida, where more than a third of Republicans vote by mail.

Mr DeSantis has become a rock star with the party base. He last month signed an "anti-riot" bill, which bolstered police powers to crack down on civil unrest.

On Wednesday, he guaranteed a $1,000 bonus for every first responder in the state, taking aim at the left-wing "defund the police" movement.

Mr DeSantis has also won praise from conservative media for his refusal to impose strict coronavirus lockdowns.

His hands-off approach appeared to be vindicated when his state emerged from the worst of the pandemic with better per capita figures than the US as a whole.

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