Politico: Emails And Text Messages Show Florida Law On Access To Ballot Boxes Was Written To Hurt Democrats

Politico reports:

Florida Republicans this spring insisted a contentious new election law curtailing access to ballot boxes was needed to prevent electoral fraud. It was not, they said, an attempt to gain a partisan advantage.

But a raft of internal emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO show the law was drafted with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer — and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election.

The messages undercut the consistent argument made by Republicans that the new law was about preventing future electoral fraud. The law — labeled “Jim Crow 2.0” by some Democrats — was passed at the strong urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill at an exclusive event aired by Fox News.

Read the full article.

Courts are willing to tolerate Republicans false worries about voter fraud to enact restrictive voting laws, but they won’t tolerate political rationales –>

‘Devastating’: Florida Republicans worried about 2022 as they crafted election law https://t.co/qk5rZiCq6F

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) September 20, 2021