Senate Bill 90 Threatens Floridians’ Freedom to Vote
TALLAHASSEE — All Voting is Local Florida State Director Brad Ashwell issued the following statement in response to the Florida Legislature passing Senate Bill 90: “SB 90 is a blatant violation of Floridians’ freedom to vote and represents a direct backlash to last year’s record-breaking turnout. By erecting onerous barriers to request and return a vote-by-mail ballot, this legislature has made voting a test of stamina and resources rather than a statement of civic responsibility."
Florida Political Review: Florida’s SB-90 Bill: Election Reform or Infringement of Voting Rights?
A recent study sponsored by the group All Voting is Local found that even despite improvement in the mail-in ballot curing efforts, there were “wide disparities between counties in the percentage of ballots initially rejected” and that “younger voters and minorities were more likely to have theirs tossed aside than older and white voters.” The director of the study and University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith believes that the current process of election administration should “in no way be moving in the other direction.”
Florida’s Legislature Must Reject Anti-Voting Bills; Expand Access to the Ballot
TALLAHASSEE - All Voting is Local Florida state director Brad Ashwell issued the following statement urging the Legislature to reject Senate Bill 90 and House Bill 7041, which would severely reduce Floridians’ access to request and return vote by mail ballots:
Florida Phoenix: Senate’s toned-down voting bill fails to stop backlash from election officials and voting-rights groups
The forum is scheduled to include Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried; Miami-Dade Democratic Sen. Annette Taddeo, vice chair of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections; and representatives of Equal Ground Action Fund, Disability Rights Florida, the League of Women Voters of Florida, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, Black Voters Matter, All Voting is Local, and many others.
Florida Politics: Senate could scale back elections bill
“This is the best version of the bill yet. But it’s important to remember that none of this is necessary. It’s a reaction to voter turnout,” Brad Ashwell, state director of All Voting is Local, told The News Service of Florida on Tuesday. Ashwell said the number of Black voters who cast ballots by mail in Florida last year doubled — to more than 500,000 — from 2016 and 2018. Black voters also cast 11.4 percent of all vote-by-mail ballots in Florida in 2020, compared to 8.9 percent in 2016, he said. “There’s no need for this bill. It’s very much designed to reinforce that national narrative that we have problems with our voting systems for the sake of justifying barriers to voting,” Ashwell said.
AP: Georgia governor: Loss of All-Star game will hurt minorities
Critics say it’s the voting law that’s political and will disproportionately affect communities of color. Kemp’s news conference was trying to deflect from that, as the governor gears up for next year’s election to try to win a second term, said Aklima Khondoker, state director of the voting rights group, All Voting is Local. “He’s pivoting away from all of the malicious things that we understand that this bill represents to people of color in Georgia,” she said.