Florida Republican pushes proposal that would completely ban ballot drop boxes

Florida Republican Dennis Baxley, the chairman of the state's Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, announced a revamped elections proposal that would completely ban drop boxes for ballots, POLITICO reports.

Baxley says the revisions are "due to a real security concern" that the boxes could be tampered with.

"I just want to maintain that chain of evidence from the time they vote to the time until they get counted so we don't have a mishap," said Baxley. But, according to POLITICO, he couldn't cite any examples of box tampering.

If his revisions go through, Baxley says voters can either mail in their ballots or "bring it to the office. That's it."

But according to Pasco County Supervisor of Election Brian Corley (R), Baxley's proposal is a "solution looking for a problem."

As POLITICO's Gary Fineout points out, nearly 44 percent of Florida voters voted by mail during the 2020 elections, party due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Democrats, who have traditionally trailed Republicans in using mail-in ballots, swamped Republicans this time around. More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters," Fineout writes.