Is Florida Going to Side with the People and President Trump or with Lobbyists Regarding Election Legislation?

Governor DeSantis, Senate President Albittron, and House Speaker Perez – Are you going to side with the People of Florida and President Trump or with the Lobbyists?

As reported previously, Florida citizens uncovered major security risks in Florida’s Elections – two-thirds of the controls needed are missing.

Florida citizen volunteers uncovered three critical election security risk areas that must be addressed during the 2025 legislative session to ensure our 2026 election results reflect the will of the people:

• Non-citizens, fictitious persons, or other illegal voters voting
• Vote-by-mail fraud and maladministration
• Technology security breaches

Florida citizen volunteers reached out to Secretary Byrd. Emails from citizens, requests for meetings, and formal complaints from citizens were ignored.

Florida citizen volunteers emailed Governor DeSantis, held rallies, and issued county REC resolutions asking for the Governor’s help. The Governor did not respond.

Florida citizens met with and emailed legislators before the 2024 legislative session and obtained sponsors for two bills that addressed their concerns. Potential sponsors for companion bills were told to stand down.  The bills were never heard in Committee.

Citizen volunteers were told it was an election year and leadership had “no appetite” for election legislation.

Undeterred and emboldened by President Trump’s call to address these issues, citizen volunteers drafted five election bills for the 2025 legislative session.

The first sign of trouble was when not even one legislator would sponsor the single-day voting bill that fully enabled President Trump’s directive for one-day voting with hand counted paper ballots. Why is there 100% resistance amongst elected legislators? The answer is – direction from “leadership”. Politics in Florida is a feudal system.

Three patriot legislators sponsored citizen-driven bills – Representative Berny Jacques, Representative Barnaby, and Senator Garcia. All three bills were assigned to be heard in a Committee:

SB1330/HB831 Protects Floridians’ votes by ensuring our votes are not canceled by non-citizens and otherwise ineligible voters on our voter rolls.

SB396/HB1203 Protects the votes of vote-by-mail voters by ensuring all legal ballots are properly counted and preventing and detecting illegal vote-by-mail ballot production, insertion, and acceptance. It prioritizes in-person voting, which is more secure and cost-effective than vote-by-mail voting.

SB394/HB1203 Ensures election results are accurate and trustworthy by preventing, detecting, and correcting compromised technologies that can cause inaccurate results, enable election fraud, or loss of confidential voter information. It also provides the option for election supervisors to conduct hand counting.

Enhanced election governance through reconciliation, transparency, and audits to ensure election accuracy are integrated into all three bills.

Citizens’ hopes rose – maybe our legislators do care about protecting our vote. Sadly, their hopes were dashed when establishment-led bills SB1414/HB1381 were introduced, falsely claiming to address citizens’ concerns while containing poison pills that make our elections less secure and less transparent.

• While President Trump and citizens call for non-citizens to be removed from our voter rolls SB1414/HB1381 does nothing to close the many loopholes that exist that enable non-citizens to register to vote in Florida and does nothing to remove them. Instead, SB1414/HB1381 has window dressing – the bills require a citizenship designation on driver’s licenses, but no requirement to consider this designation in polling places or when registering to vote.

• While President Trump and citizens call for vote-by-mail to be limited to citizens unable to physically go to the polls, SB1414/HB1381 maintains the status quo for no-excuse vote-by-mail and does little to protect vote-by-mail ballots from being discarded, replaced, or diluted by illegal vote-by-mail ballots.

• While President Trump is calling for hand counting of paper ballots and citizens’ bills give supervisors of election the option to hand count paper ballots, SB1414/HB1381 bans the counting of paper ballots even for audits. Instead, SB1414/HB1381 replaces audits with an automated “vote validation system,” which will do nothing but line someone’s pockets and give voters a false sense of security. It changes recounts to reviews of digital ballots, and it reduces transparency by making voting system reports less available to citizens or candidates.

Florida citizens are organizing an online town hall to debate the issues. Florida voters – please call and email your legislators and Governor DeSantis. And call or email the two legislators who are refusing to even let our citizen-driven bills SB1330/HB931, SB396/HB1203, and SB394/HB1203 be heard in their Committees – Senator Gaetz at 850-595-1036 ~ 850-487-5001 ~ [email protected] and Representative Chaney at (850) 717-5061 ~ (727) 387-8600 ~ [email protected].

Visit defendflorida.org to learn more about election security legislation and what you can do to protect our votes.

Is this how democracy works? Is this bright red Florida?