Florida won’t tolerate any “election shenanigans” and will look into recent complaints of voter fraud in Miami-Dade County, where elderly Democrats are complaining their party affiliations were changed to Republican without their knowledge, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday.
DeSantis said the latest election-fraud complaints are an example of how his proposed “election integrity unit” — made of investigators and law enforcement — could help crack down on such problems.
The unit “will go after those types of election shenanigans,” he said, because some local jurisdictions will investigate and others “don’t really pay a lot of attention to any election infractions.”
On Friday, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava asked prosecutors to investigate claims of “voter fraud” after elderly residents in Little Havana said their party affiliations were changed without their knowledge.
In December, WPLG-Ch. 10 reported that an 84-year-old lifelong Democrat unknowingly signed paperwork to change her registration to Republican after canvassing staff for the Republican Party of Florida knocked on her door. More elderly residents, all over the age of 65 years old, then came forward to say they were now registered as Republicans without their knowledge, according to WPLG, which published its most recent report on the issue Thursday.
Levine Cava subsequently “sent an official request to the State Attorney to investigate recent reports of voter registration fraud to ensure the integrity of the elections process,” a county spokeswoman wrote in an email late Friday.
In Miami-Dade on Monday, DeSantis responded a reporter’s questions about complaints from residents of Haley Sofge Towers, a county-managed public housing complex in Little Havana.
“We’re pursing the strongest election integrity measures, we’ve already done the strongest in the country,” DeSantis said, which includes banning ballot harvesting and a requirement of identification when requesting an absentee ballot.
“Anything trying to violate election law is something that I think needs to be taken seriously,” he said. “We’re going to try to have it all referred to the statewide prosecutor ... so it doesn’t even matter which jurisdiction.”
And DeSantis said, “It doesn’t matter which group is doing it. If they’re changing to Republican and that’s illicit, they need to be held accountable.”
Democrats have scrutinized DeSantis’ motives for pushing a crackdown on election crimes, accusing him of political posturing.
“It seems completely politically motivated,” Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, told the Orlando Sentinel in December. “Governor Ron DeSantis wants to set himself up to be president in 2024 and part of that means going along with some of this extreme rhetoric around election fraud that isn’t accurate.”
The voter fraud concerns in Miami-Dade have drawn prosecutors’ attention, said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.
“We are aware of recent reports relating to voter registration fraud, and we have been investigating these claims for several weeks now as we take these allegations very seriously,” Fernandez Rundle said. “Voting is one of our most sacred rights and privileges as citizens. We must all be diligent in protecting our individual rights as voters. Our right to vote and the voting process should always be free from interference and misconduct by others.”
State Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami, submitted a letter last week to the Miami-Dade elections supervisor. Taddeo is also seeking the nomination for governor.
“It no longer appears that this was an isolated incident but a targeted effort to swindle one of our most vulnerable populations: our elders,” Taddeo wrote.
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