May 6, 2021

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a wildly contentious and unnecessary voting "rights" bill, but barred all media outlets except for Fox News from the signing ceremony.

By kicking out all of Florida's media and turning a bill signing into a huge political event for Fox alone embodies how totally bankrupt and morally corrupted the Florida Republican Party is, all in an effort to appease one person.

It also may be in violation of the state's Sunshine Laws.

As with all Republican anti-voting measures percolating throughout the country, this bill makes it harder for US citizens in Florida to vote. As we reported earlier this week, Florida Republicans are becoming aware that their bill may hurt their own voters, notably military service people and the elderly.

The Tampa Bay Times writes, "Elections supervisors warned last week that the bill makes it harder to request and return vote by mail ballots:

  • Floridians now have to give a driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to request a vote by mail ballot.
  • Requests for mail ballots also don’t last as long. Instead of requesting a ballot through the next two general elections — the next four years — requests are limited to the next general election — or two years. (Current requests are grandfathered in.)
  • Drop boxes are limited to early voting hours, unless it’s a drop box at the supervisor’s office, and the boxes must be manned while in use.

The signing ceremony took place on Fox and Friends this morning and mini-TraitorTrump DeSantis said, "So right now I have what we think is the strongest election integrity measures in the country."

Whenever you hear a Republican say the word "election integrity," you know that means it's being done to support lies and QAnon conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and to make it harder for Americans to cast a ballot.

Since TraitorTrump won Florida in the 2020 election, there wasn't a peep made about election fraud conspiracies from the Trump/Giuliani misinformation highway, so why was this necessary?

Joe Scott, the Broward County supervisor of elections who took office in January, called the legislation “terrible” in an interview Wednesday.

“The new law has limitations that are unreasonable and extremely confusing,” Scott said. “That confusion in effect will lead to voter suppression. Many voters who don’t understand the rules will decide not to participate at all.”

Co-host Steve Doocy was enthralled that DeSantis shills were clapping.

"Thank you very much for joining us live -- very boisterous crowd happy to be up and on TV with you." Doocy said.

Meanwhile the rest of Florida's State media was left in the cold.

That's not democracy that's fascism.

UPDATE: Fox is now backtracking, explaining that they didn't ASK for the exclusive. That is likely to remove them from the Sunshine Law lawsuit that may ensue.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon