"S.B. 90 is a blatant violation of Floridians' freedom to vote and represents a direct backlash to last year's record-breaking turnout," said Brad Ashwell, the director of the Florida branch of All Voting is Local. "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."

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."

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.”

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: 

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.

“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.