Washington Post: “Republican campaigns invested millions of dollars encouraging their supporters to cast ballots by mail. State legislators passed laws making it easier. Over the ensuing decades, GOP voters in Florida became so comfortable with casting ballots by mail that in 2020, nearly 35 percent of those who turned out did so, according to state data compiled by University of Florida professor Dan Smith. Virtually every narrow Republican victor of the past generation – and there have been many, including two of the state’s current top officeholders, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott – owes their victory, at least in part, to mail voting. Now, some Florida Republicans are reacting with alarm after the GOP-dominated state legislature, with DeSantis’s support, passed a far-reaching bill Thursday night that puts new restrictions on the use of mail ballots.”

“Not only are GOP lawmakers reversing statutes that their own predecessors put in place, but they are also curtailing a practice that millions of state Republicans use, despite former president Donald Trump’s relentless and baseless claims that it invites fraud. Even as Democrats and voting rights advocates accuse the proponents of Senate Bill 90 of attempting to suppress the votes of people of color, these Republicans say their own political fortunes are in peril, too. The potential fallout in the key swing state illustrates how the Republican Party is hurting itself in its rush to echo Trump’s false allegations, they said. ‘Donald Trump attempted to ruin a perfectly safe and trusted method of voting,’ said one Republican consultant in the state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment. ‘The main law that we pass when we pass election bills in Florida is the law of unintended consequences,’ he said. Now, he added, the GOP must live with the result.”