TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) – Governor Ron DeSantis has supported the efforts of the state election leader and county election supervisors after President Donald Trump optioned to postpone the November general election because of his aversion to mail-order ballots.
“I think Florida will be well located,” DeSantis said in an appearance at Space Florida’s headquarters on Merritt Island.
DeSantis, who had attended the morning launch of the Perseverance rover and the Mars-bound Ingenuity helicopter at Cape Canaveral, asked about the electoral issues because Trump in a morning tweet continued his attack on the mail vote and the possible legitimacy of the election.
“With the universal mail vote (not the mail vote, which is good), 2020 will be the most INEXACT AND FRAUDULENT election of history,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a wonderful disgrace to America. Delay elections until others can vote properly, safely and safely?”
The date of the general election is set by federal law to the Tuesday following the first Monday of November – November 3 of this year. Trump would like to get a congressional law to move the date, which is highly unlikely, especially with the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
DeSantis, who said he had not noticed Trump’s tweet, defended his ally at the White House and said there was some “confusion” about the plans of some states to send ballots to the entire Florida electorate and Florida’s approach of requiring the electorate to request ballots by mail.
“There are other people who say that mass votes are simply sent to all directions, whether they request them or whatever,” DeSantis said. “And I think that creates disorders in terms of fraud potential. That’s not what we do in Florida.”
DeSantis said the Florida procedure requires voter verification.
“I think it’s a vital check to make sure you agree to have your ballot,” DeSantis said. “They send it to you. And then, of course, they’ll wait for you to get it, and then they’ll make sure you get it. But borrowing the ballots anyway, I think it would be a mistake.
Trump gave the impression of using the term “absent” vote to pass processes like the Florida system, while opposing other processes he describes as a mail-in vote.
In Florida, mail ballots were called mailed ballots until the 2002 electoral settings that no longer required the electorate to report the reasons, such as poor health or being out of town, to obtain ballots.
The Florida GoP sent letters begging the electorate to request a “vote by mail,” with the component adding recent Tweets from Trump, such as a June 28 tweet saying “mail votes are fine.”
The rest of the June 28 tweet is overlooked from GoP emails: “Vote by mail, on the other hand, will lead to the most corrupt election in American history. Bad things with the mail. See special elections in Patterson, NJ 19% of ballots are a FRAUDE! »
In the run-up to the number one election on August 18 in Florida, Democrats finished 440776 ballots, and its component emphasized the importance of mail voting this year, at least in part because of the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans, who have traditionally had merit in the mail-in-mail vote in Florida, submitted 348,608 ballots.
Florida has 13.7 million registered voters. Including the ballots already cast, Democrats won more than 1.8 million ballots by mail, while nearly 1.3 million were sent to Republicans.
Voters can vote on the user and polling stations on polling day.
DeSantis said the state would monitor voter fraud and that Florida’s leading election secretary Laurel Lee had amassed resources to keep others running safely at the polls.
He noted that some election officials withdrew from the number one presidential election in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, but said others would have to make sure that polling stations on Election Day worked entirely.
“All election supervisors have been waiting for this for a long time. The Secretary of State has been making plans for this for a long time. And I think Florida will be in a position to do so,” DeSantis said.
(© 2020 CBS Local Media. All rights reserved. This curtain cannot be published, transmitted, rewritten or redistributed. Jim Turner’s press in Florida contributed to this report).