Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) poses a menace to voting rights all around the nation, the Miami Herald’s editorial board wrote in a column Wednesday.
The newspaper printed the editorial as a part of a collection, “Lessons from Florida,” describing “what it is like to live under his influence” and spreading the phrase past state strains amid the Republican’s bid for the White Home.
“Voters should look at what he’s done in Florida to understand how a potential DeSantis presidency could approach voter access,” the board wrote.
“His approach isn’t to make it easier for voters to cast ballots, especially if they are voters of color, poor and elderly,” it mentioned. “Much to the contrary.”
DeSantis has signed a number of elections payments in recent times which have made it tougher for individuals to vote. The laws has been criticized by advocacy teams and Democrats as an try and suppress voting, significantly by minorities.
A choose dominated on Saturday that Florida’s congressional map, signed by DeSantis earlier than final yr’s midterms, violated the state’s Structure by shrinking the affect of Black voters.
“A President DeSantis would appoint judges and, potentially, Supreme Court justices, allowing him to take cement his vision even further through the judicial system,” the Herald wrote.
“Beyond what a president can do via official actions, his leadership and words also matter. A president who speaks about voting-rights protections as if they were ‘woke’ special privileges for minorities can push his party to pass restrictive state voting laws, as Trump did after 2020.”
DeSantis is Donald Trump’s closest rival within the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, however trails the previous president by almost 40 factors.
Learn the complete editorial by the Miami Herald right here.
