‘Best Model For The Country'? Ron DeSantis Touts Florida's Election Laws

By Christine Sexton, Florida Phoenix

August 20, 2025

Other states should emulate Florida’s election laws, which have been changed twice following the 2020 election but still allow people to vote by mail, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday.

“So, we showed it can be done. I think our model is the best model for the country,” DeSantis said.

His remarks somewhat distanced the governor from President Donald Trump, who on Monday said administration lawyers are drafting an executive order to eliminate mail-in voting. He made the announcement after Vladimir Putin told him the 2020 U.S. elections were rigged because of postal ballots. (Election laws are set at the state level and Trump cannot unilaterally end mail voting.)

DeSantis contended that Trump’s remarks were aimed more at other states.

“When [Trump] says vote-by-mail, I think, is the states like California and Nevada and others where they just send all these ballots out into the ether, basically, ” the governor said, alleging voting lists aren’t accurate in those states and they allow “ballot harvesting” by third parties, including volunteers or campaign workers.

Ballot harvesting — delivering mail-in ballots belonging to anyone except the single voter and immediate family members — is a third-degree felony in Florida, punishable by five years in prison and $5,000 in fines.

Voting-rights groups have long used ballot harvesting to get out the vote but DeSantis demonized it after the 2020 elections and again on Tuesday.

The “mass voting of ballots has been a huge mistake and I don’t think that they’re adequate safeguards on that, when you start talking about the Californias and the Nevadas, and so I think it should be discontinued.”

Trump lost the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden. Trump, at the time the incumbent, alleged widespread fraud, an assertion that has been repeatedly debunked.
While DeSantis acknowledged in 2023 that Trump lost the election, he initially dodged answering the question and focused his efforts on changing the state’s election laws.
And the Legislature delivered in early 2021 with SB 90. The changes include requiring voters to show ID and provide the last digits of their Social Security numbers to request a vote-by-mail ballot.

SB 90 also restricted the locations of drop boxes for ballots to be returned to the local supervisor of elections office or at an early-voting location during early voting hours. Or via the U.S. Mail, FedEx, UPS, or another mail carrier.

The law bars anyone other than poll workers from distributing food or water to people in line within 150 feet of a polling place or drop box.

The League of Women Voters and other voting and civil rights organizations successfully challenged SB 90 in court, arguing the changes suppressed voting by Black voters, Latino voters, and others.

In a 288-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee barred the state and county supervisors of elections from enforcing, among other things, the ban on supplying food and water to people waiting in line to vote and limiting the use of drop boxes.

Walker also ordered the state to clear any future changes in voting laws during the next 10 years with him. But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit largely reversed Walker’s decision.

Before DeSantis’s 2022 historic landslide re-election, the Legislature in early 2022 passed another round of election law changes in SB 254. That bill established an elections crimes unit. He said he worked on the initiative with his then-chief of staff, now-Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.

It "has actually brought people to justice for violating election law. Illegal aliens voting, people voting in multiple jurisdictions, people that have been convicted of homicide and sexual assault illegally voting, and those folks have actually been brought to justice in Florida,” DeSantis said.

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