Ron DeSantis has touted his election reform record, and he’s taking it on the road as a presidential candidates
The Florida Governor told a crowd in Algona, Iowa, that most of the votes he got in 2022 against Democrat Charlie Crist were legitimate.
“I’m not saying out of however many, eight or nine million votes that were cast in my election that there wasn’t one illegal vote. I can’t say that, but I can tell you there weren’t very many because people know if you do that, you’re going to be held accountable,” DeSantis said at a Never Back Down “meet and greet” event Saturday.
The Governor did not explain what exact total constitutes “not very many” to the Hawkeye State crowd.
Before the 2022 election, DeSantis signed SB 524, which contains numerous changes to state election laws, including setting up a police force dedicated to voter fraud and increasing the penalty for ballot harvesting to a third-degree felony. It established the Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State, the agency overseeing elections.
The law also ramped up penalties to felony levels for “ballot harvesting,” a practice in which non-family members of voters would bundle ballots and drop them.
“Twenty years ago, nobody thought Florida was a prime example of how to conduct elections, but we have become a national leader by running the most secure elections in the country,” DeSantis said when he signed the legislation in 2022. “We need to do more to ensure our elections remain secure.”
The Governor’s Iowa comments suggest that despite the focus on election law, more still remains to be done to have 100% legit elections.
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