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GOP
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who likes democracy about as much as he likes gay people, has done a fair bit of bragging about the law he signed to "reduce voting fraud." Of course, anyone who reads this site knows what that is code for, and indeed, the legislation in question was primarily set up to make it harder for voter registration groups to operate in the Sunshine State.
Several of those voter registration groups filed suit and yesterday Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida Mark Walker issued an injunction blocking significant parts of the law. An injunction is not a final decision, of course, but Walker is clearly not impressed with the merits of the state's case. He wrote: "When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall. The free state of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution." Note that "the free state of Florida" portion of that is a direct poke in DeSantis' eye, as that is one of his catchphrases.
There are two things worth pointing out here, significance-wise. First, even if Florida manages to overcome the injunction and win the case (an outcome that does not seem likely), it is going to take a very long time. The closer we get to 2024, the more problematic it becomes for a state to change how it runs elections, and the more likely that the status quo holds for at least one more cycle. Note that Florida not only has a U.S. Senate race involving a not-so-popular senator (Rick Scott), but it is at least nominally a swing state.
Second, DeSantis' pitch to Republican voters is that he gets far-right things done. By all indications, much of the base doesn't actually care about that. But for those who do, "I get things done" is rather more impressive than "I get things done... for a few weeks, until a court undoes them." Maybe the ephemeral quality of the Governor's "accomplishments" is why he's shifted his focus to making clear which groups he hates more than Donald Trump does. (Z)