Florida Gov. Ronald Dion DeSantis speaks during a news conference about the surge in cases of the CCHD virus at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami on July 13, 2020. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Florida Gov. Ronald Dion DeSantis (D) spoke in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Feb. 19 about election integrity, opposing mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting and delays in counting; he also compared the outbreak in Florida and California, arguing that the shutdown policy is not working.
Ronald Dion DeSantis has been governor of Florida since 2019, was a member of Congress from 2014 to 2018, and has served as a Navy SEAL officer and district attorney.
Maintaining election integrity
DeSantis said, “We take the 2020 election very seriously and have invested millions of dollars in protecting (election) integrity, including preventing any type of cyber manipulation and cyber attacks. Many states have used the COVID-19 (Chinese Communist virus) pandemic as an excuse to rush into new election methods, such as mail-in ballots, and it takes days, weeks or even longer for election results to be calculated.”
“But we didn’t do that in Florida, our system is secure, and we have the most transparent and efficient elections in this country. On election night, we got 99 percent reporting, counted 11 million votes and released the results, and those are things that could have been done on election day.”
DeSantis believes Florida did a good job in the general election reporting data in real Time, “We had two counties out of 65 that didn’t report real time data and we’ll do a better job next to make sure every county is reporting real time data like how many votes were counted, how many people were left in line, etc.”
DeSantis stressed the need for a legal ban on the use of mail-in ballots. “I want to say that Floridians can vote with confidence that your vote is important and will be counted. There are issues we will address in the legislative session that will give citizens confidence in elections and prohibit cheating. We will never allow ‘ballot harvesting’ or similar activities. Voting is a sacred matter, and it is up to you to decide and fill it out in person.”
“Absentee ballots have a long history and can be sent to you upon request after verification that you are a legal voter; however, after you turn them in, we will verify that the signatures match to make sure you are a real voter.”
DeSantis said some states don’t have clean voter rolls or have inaccurate information. The California Secretary of State has set up many ballot boxes throughout the state without effective monitoring. Florida does not have ballot boxes, and absentee ballots can be delivered by post or by voters to polling places.
“Also we have election administration, Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook executive, has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to influence and change elections everywhere, and we in Florida can’t allow money from special interest groups to come into elections.”
On counting votes, DeSantis said, “Candidates and parties should not be excluded from monitoring or other processes that both Republican and Democratic observers can monitor. What we do best is report data on voter turnout in real time, and we know how many mail-in ballots were received before the election and how many people voted in person on Election Day, but when the polls close on Election Day, no more ballots can come in.”
Regarding delays in some states citing the Epidemic, DeSantis said, “You can’t say there are 25,000 ballots left to come in, how many more days you have to wait, or even how many more ballots will be sent in later; bingo it will take days or weeks to count the votes.”
Staying open during the epidemic
What about Florida, where many areas were hit economically and badly during the epidemic? “We didn’t use a single penny of the Umbrella Protection Fund during the entire COVID-19 period,” DeSantis said, to a standing ovation from the audience.
“In Florida, we did revenue estimates, and the revised estimates also generate hundreds of millions of dollars more per month. We’ve kept it open and people can work without being shut down by their local government, which demonstrates that freedom works. We’ve also proven that closures (blockades) are ineffective, if you look at similar areas, Illinois, New York and California, where the epidemic is worse than Florida, despite the fact that they were closed for nine months. We are vaccinating seniors in Florida, which has a lot of momentum, and all schools and all businesses should be open.”
DeSantis said, “I believe this will strengthen us, that Florida has transparency in elections, that people are confident in what Florida is doing, and that many people want to move to Florida.”
California has adopted the toughest closure policy and the economy has been hit hard. Florida has opened its disney theme parks since last July, while California has been closed for a year and does not yet know when it will reopen. Additional layoffs of 4,000 workers (32,000 total) were announced late last year and implemented in the first half of today. California, including small businesses, churches, schools, sports venues and more, are demanding openness, and Governor Newsom has received various lawsuits for his abuse of power and is facing removal from office by Californians.
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