ORLANDO, Fla. — A provision in Florida’s controversial elections bill echoes one of the most controversial measures in Georgia’s new law restricting voting rights: a ban on giving anything, including food and water, to people in line to vote.
Florida House bill 7041 would increase the distance from a polling site in which voters couldn’t be “solicited” to 150 feet from the current 100 feet.
“Solicit” has been defined to include distributing campaign materials, selling items, or conducting polls.
But a new provision has been added in the bill that would add “giving or attempting to give any item” to the list of banned solicitations.
Anyone violating the provision, if passed and signed into law, would be guilty of a misdemeanor.
State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, said in a committee meeting last week that the ban would indeed include “food or beverages,” according to NBC News.
The bill noticeably differs from the controversial state Senate bill that would ban drop boxes. The House bill doesn’t ban the boxes but increases security for them.
Like the Senate bill, though, it would ban anyone other than an immediate family member from handling someone’s ballot. It would also require voters to request vote-by-mail ballots every year instead of every two years.
Florida’s proposed election restrictions are part of a spate of GOP bills across the country cracking down on mail-in voting, early voting and other methods following former President Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
Florida joined late in the push by national Republicans to enact new election restrictions, with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida GOP chair Joe Gruters repeatedly praising the state’s elections systems in the weeks after the vote.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, wrote on Twitter, “For anyone who has ever had to stand in line in Florida’s heat — particularly in the August primaries — this latest move by Tallahassee Republicans is just cruel & unusual.”
In Georgia, the water provision has been targeted by Black activists as a direct attack on voting in urban areas.
“We will make a movement out of that,” the Rev. Tim McDonald, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta, told CNN. “You know something is wrong when you can’t give grandma a bottle of water and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
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