Florida is at the front lines of a partisan battle over access to the ballot.

On April 29, 2026 the state legislature approved a redrawn congressional map designed to give Republicans four additional seats in the House of Representatives. The new map, submitted by Gov. Ron DeSantis just two days prior, was approved within hours of SCOTUS issuing its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that eviscerated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, among other things.

Historically, the Supreme Court had found that states had the right to create such districts to protect minority voting powers. But this Court’s conservative majority ruled 6-3 in favor of the plaintiffs, further gutting a landmark piece of legislation from the Civil Rights era and effectively enabling Florida’s gerrymandered map.

Florida also recently passed a voter ID law requiring not only proof of citizenship before registering to vote, but also radically restricting what types of photo ID can be used to verify one’s identity to election officials. Going forward, student IDs, those issued by retirement homes, and public assistance ID cards are no longer acceptable forms of identification at the polls.

Being a Black woman based in Florida’s capital, I’ve seen firsthand how my state has become a testing ground for far-right ideas that often become laws and almost invariably affect people like me.

Once a political battleground, Florida has been a solid Republican stronghold since 2020. Republicans now hold a supermajority in the state legislature, and since taking office in 2019, DeSantis has unleashed an assault on civil liberties.

Florida’s new voter ID law is modeled on a Republican-sponsored federal bill. The SAVE America Act would require Americans to present proof of U.S. citizenship and a photo ID to register to vote or update their voter registration information.

“Your own driver’s license wouldn’t be sufficient to be able to cast your ballot. We’re talking passports or original birth certificates,” Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat representing California, told ABC7 in April 2026. “If you’re a woman who changed her name when she got married, good luck trying to meet the documentary requirements.”

The month before, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had signaled that the federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which passed the House in February 2026, would almost certainly die in........

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