July 16, 2023

According to NBC2, hundreds of thousands of vote-by-mail requests have been wiped out of the system in every county in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis has been ramping up voting restrictions despite very few cases of voter fraud being found.

It's a way to stop our votes from counting. If people voted more, Republicans would never win an election again. Republicans haven't won the popular vote in presidential elections since 2004. Their policies just aren't popular, and neither are their candidates.

NBC2 reports:

This means most of us right now will not receive a ballot in the upcoming March primary.

Lee County would like to have about 250,000 vote-by-mail requests in its system, but currently only has 23,000.

It's up to voters to reach out to the county they live in to request a ballot be mailed to them.

Stephanie Korczak is a registered voter in Lee County and prefers to vote by mail in order to save her time and the stress of waiting in line on Election Day.

She was shocked to learn that her request for a mail ballot was wiped out of the county's system.

"There was no notification. I didn't get notified. I didn't know that this was all happening. It just came out of the blue," Korczak said.

However, a new law signed by Governor Ron DeSantis requires counties to purge requests before every general election. They claim it will cut down on election fraud, although no significant fraud has been discovered in Florida.

"The DeSantis legislature kicked everyone off of vote by mail at the end of the year, so beginning January 1st it's up to us to go and re-enroll and vote by mail," said Viri Ryan, a registered voter in Lee County.

It's so serious that Lee County Election Supervisor Tommy Doyle called it unprecedented.

"Right now, it seems pretty serious. It's unprecedented because this is the first time everyone's request for vote by mail has expired," Doyle said.

In Charlotte County, last year there were 34,000 vote-by-mail requests and currently they have just 5,600.

“We’re going to do everything we can to notify voters. We’re going to send out mailers. We don’t want to be inundated with requests and try to process those and just swamp our staff,” Doyle said.

Republicans have been railing against mail-in voting even though the leader of their party, Donald J. Trump, votes by mail.

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