A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis is accusing unions in states that prioritize voting by mail of violating the principle of the “secret ballot” by examining their members’ votes.
“I think it honestly leads to intimidation too. You know, if you’re in Las Vegas, everyone knows ballots get mailed out,” he said during a press conference. “Do you think the Culinary Union is just going to let you kind of vote your conscience without trying to — no, they’re going to want to see those votes. They’re going to want to bring the votes in.”
The Governor made the comments in St. Cloud as part of a larger condemnation of “states like California and Nevada and others where they just send all these ballots out into the ether.”
“They have a voting list, which is not accurate and not caught up to speed. And then they dump all these ballots out there. So, if you’re, like, renting an apartment in Las Vegas and you register to vote there, they’ll mail you a ballot if you don’t ask. And then they’ll mail you a ballot for the person that rented that apartment before you. And then they’ll send you a ballot for the person that rented the apartment before them,” DeSantis said.
“And you get these ballots just showing up, and then they do ballot harvesting,” he added, which amounts to “fraud.”
The Governor was responding to a question about Donald Trump’s recent denunciation of voting by mail. The President said the United States is “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting” and that he would “lead a movement” to get rid of them, including an Executive Order to “bring HONESTY” to elections beginning in 2026.
DeSantis suggested that Trump agrees that Florida’s model — which was revamped in recent years to end opportunities for “ballot harvesting” but still includes mail ballots upon request of the registered voter — is acceptable nonetheless.
Election officials, he said, are “not authorized to mail anybody a ballot on their own.”
“They can send you (an) absentee,” he said. “We’ve got snowbirds, so it’s popular to have that option. Clearly, you would need some absentee for military overseas, right? I mean, so that’s at a minimum you’d need that.”
It’s unclear why Florida would merit a special dispensation for part-time residents but other states would not. Likewise, all states have people deployed overseas.
