Florida came under (rightly) criticism after the election chaos in 2000 – pregnant children, anyone? In the years since, the Sunshine State has improved significantly.
Governor Ron DeSantis (R) joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss the steps Florida is taking to strengthen election integrity – and why trust in election results is critical.
This morning I sat down with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss Florida’s election integrity efforts. pic.twitter.com/Fc8bK289Pc
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) 15 September 2024
Here are the key points of their exchange:
BARTIROMO: Your reaction to what you just heard from AG Merrick Garland – and explain your plans to ensure fair elections in Florida.
DESANTIS: As you mentioned in the Chyron video, Maria, in the state of Florida we have banned ballot harvesting and imposed severe penalties – that should happen statewide. Of course, we require a photo ID to vote, we have banned the utilize of sugar bucks and we aggressively monitor voter rolls so that we have true voter rolls. And when people have violated our election laws, this Election Crimes Unit that we have established has been able to investigate and prosecute those people – and in the last few years alone, over 50 people have been convicted of various types of voter fraud.
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[T]The Democrats oppose voter ID because they want to allow illegal voting — there is no other reason. I remember when I was a Marine officer, Maria — if you wanted to enter a Marine base, you had to show your ID. It didn’t matter if you were black, white, luxurious or impoverished — it didn’t matter. If you show a photo ID, they know who you are and you get in. If you don’t, you don’t get in. If you’re a foreigner without ID, of course you won’t get in, and we see IDs used in so many other areas of American life.
So, we’re doing it right in Florida. Some other Republican states are doing it right, I think. But there are some of those Democratic states that aren’t taking any of the safeguards that we’re taking here in Florida.
Bartiromo then asked DeSantis why he thought these problems persist.
BARTIROMO: Officials in Oregon acknowledged Friday that a data entry “error,” they claim, has registered over 300 noncitizens to vote in the state since 2021 – the AP reported, Governor. What specifically would you like to see from each state to address this problem?
DESANTIS: Well, all states should have laws that don’t allow noncitizens to vote – and that includes, of course, illegal immigrants, who have come to the country by the millions under Biden-Harris. But we also have foreigners who are here legally on visas and who follow the rules. But that doesn’t mean they can vote in American elections. So those safeguards are in place.
I think this ballot harvesting that’s going on in some of these states is completely outrageous. If it’s legal in a state like Nevada, I think Republicans have no choice but to do it themselves. We have to fight fire against fire. But nobody should be allowed to carry around all these ballots and put them in a mailbox. By the way, in Florida we don’t allow these mailboxes to be put in the middle of a city or anything. If you want to cast a mail-in ballot, you can mail it in or drop it off at the election office. That’s what should be done.
Bartiromo praised DeSantis for his persistence on the issue and then asked him how much confidence he had that America would “experience a safe and fair election.”
DESANTIS: I’m incredibly confident about Florida – we had the best election in 2020. Remember all the chicanery that went on there – it took days to count the votes, sometimes weeks. We counted and processed 11 to 12 million votes in the state of Florida in a matter of hours. We reported the results, and that was it. We did even better in 2022, and we’re going to do a good job in 2024.
How it’s going in the other states – particularly the Democratic states – I don’t know exactly. But I do know that the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups have had four years to figure this out. So I hope they’re on the ground in those states making sure that we have a very crystal clear process and that those votes are counted and the results are reported in a timely manner. We can’t get into a situation where we don’t know the results for a couple of days. What happens in those couple of days? Where are those votes coming from? Florida will announce the results on election night – you can count on that.
Bartiromo then referred to the recent New York Times article titled “Harris or Trump? Again, it may take a while for the election results to be determined,” which points out that there is unlikely to be a clear winner on election night and that early results could be misleading.
DESANTIS: That’s outrageous. You have a candidate who has a huge lead based on the votes on Election Day, and then people wake up the next morning and say, “Oh yeah, my candidate is ahead by 6 percent.” And then the next day they count more, and the day after that they count more, and then the lead reverses. So what obviously happens during that period? But even if nothing happened – even if everything was above board – it destroys confidence in the way this election was conducted. Any of the states that do what the New York Times says they are doing is destroying public confidence in this election. Count the votes on election night and announce the results. (Emphasis mine.)
DeSantis is absolutely right. There is no reason why states shouldn’t be able to count votes on election night and announce their results within hours in 2024, and the apparent loss of that ability simply undermines Americans’ faith in free and fair elections. There is no excuse for that.
