Politico: “Republicans said Florida’s contentious new election law was needed to bolster security of future elections and downplayed any talk that they were pushing it to gain a partisan advantage. But that’s not the full story. A raft of emails and text messages show that Florida’s new law was drafted with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer – and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election.”

“Yet in one remarkable text exchange obtained by Politico, state Sen. Joe Gruters and lead House sponsor state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) went back-and-forth over proposals to shorten how long mail-in ballot requests are valid. Gruters defended a Senate proposal to cancel all existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that it would be ‘devastating’ for Republicans to keep them valid heading into the 2022 election when DeSantis and other state GOP officials are up for re-election. Warning – More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters during the 2020 election where Trump easily won Florida. Part of that was due to the ongoing pandemic, as Democrats strongly encouraged voters to change their habits nationwide. ‘We cannot make up ground. Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead,’ Gruters wrote to Ingoglia, who had been chairman of the Republican Party of Florida before Gruters.”