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TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s Republican-led Legislature — in an attempt to respond to unfounded complaints about voter fraud following the 2020 presidential election — on Thursday adopted new voting restrictions and placed limits on how local officials run elections.

The legislation now heads to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign the bill ahead of what could be an expensive and bitterly-fought 2022 re-election campaign.

While lawmakers removed many of the more stringent restrictions after weeks of fierce debate, the House and Senate still approved the bill (SB 90) largely along party lines. Democrats called the measure unnecessary and said it was more about responding to the “big lie” of voter fraud pushed by former President Donald Trump and countering Democrats advantage in mail-in ballots.

“There’s no reason whatsoever that we should deter people from voting and making it much more difficult,” said Sen. Audrey Gibson, a Jacksonville Democrat. “It’s still a suppression bill.”

Rep. Geraldine Thompson, a Black Democrat from Windermere, called the measure a modern-day effort to impose new restrictions on minority voters.

“People like me have been relegated to the back of the bus and you want to me to sit here and accept it,” said Thompson.

Republicans countered that Florida voters still have much more opportunities to vote than even in other Democratic-run states. They contended the changes would put in “guardrails” so that problems that occurred elsewhere in 2020 would not show up in the Sunshine State.

“We did have a great election, but why should we stop there?” said Sen. Travis Hutson, a St. Augustine Republican.

State Sen. Joe Gruters, who is also the Republican Party of Florida chair, asserted GOP legislators were trying to make it “easy as possible to vote and hard as possible to cheat.”

“This does nothing to suppress the vote, it does nothing to restrict the vote,” he said earlier this week.

The bill is not nearly as restrictive as the measure approved in Georgia, which garnered widespread condemnation from business leaders, Democrats and sports organizations.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Florida saw a spike in the number of mail-in ballots and nearly 44 percent of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election did not cast their ballot in person. About 1.5 million of these mail-in ballots were placed in drop boxes, which allowed voters to bypass the postal service and hand them directly over to election officials.

Florida’s elections went relative smoothly and DeSantis himself boasted about that the state had finally “vanquished the ghost” of the 2000 presidential election recount that subjected the state to international ridicule. But then the governor in late February called for many of the changes that are outlined in the bill heading to his desk.

One of the most significant changes in the bill would place a two-ballot limit on how many mail-in ballots someone could gather and turn in on behalf of the elderly or sick and disabled voters. There is an exception for immediate family members, but some Democrats predicted this would lead to older voters being less able to participate.

The bill would impose new restrictions on when drop boxes could be used and would bar outside groups from giving out grants to help local and state election officials administer elections. This was done as a response to a Chicago-based non-profit handing out millions in aid ahead of the 2020 elections. Most of the money from that non-profit came from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.

At one point, the bill had a blanket prohibition on giving out food and water to voters who were within 150 feet of a polling place or drop box, but lawmakers changed it to instead bar anyone from trying to influence a voter in that zone.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley acknowledged the final bill had “no show stoppers” unlike earlier incarnations that had proposed eliminating drop boxes or canceling all current vote-by-mail requests already on file. But Earley was angry that the measure would subject to the state’s local elections officials to hefty fines if they do not follow some of the new rules covering drop boxes.

“We still see the $25,000 civil fine as an insult to a group that had the best elections in the nation under unprecedently difficult circumstances,” Earley said in a text message. “Thanks for the slap in the face.”

Republicans in Florida used mail-in balloting for years to maintain their grip on state government. But amid Trump’s continued attacks on mail-in voting and the pandemic, Democrats racked up a substantial advantage in mail-in ballots during the 2020 general election. More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters.

Another provision in the bill that drew scorn from Democrats removes a carveout in current state law that requires an election if someone resigns from office to run for a different elected position. Democrats called it a “power grab” that they said would give DeSantis the power to fill the spots of two Broward County commissioners expected to seek the congressional seat held by the late Rep. Alcee Hastings. Hastings died earlier this month.

The legislation did include one nod to Democrats: It would prohibit anyone from running as an independent candidate unless they had been registered as an independent for a full year prior to qualifying for the ballot. Senate Democrats pushed for the change in the wake of a criminal investigation in Miami-Dade County in a scheme where a sham candidate ran in a state Senate race in order to allegedly siphon votes from a Democratic candidate.