Florida announced with great fanfare last week that 20 people had been charged with voting illegally in the 2020 election. That may sound like an early win for the new elections police force that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature last spring. But this is actually about voter intimidation on the eve of an election.
For perspective, we’re talking about the arrests of 20 people in an election where more than 11 million people voted. At the time, DeSantis boasted that the voting process in 2020 — in which he delivered Florida to Donald Trump — was squeaky clean: “The way Florida did it, I think, inspires confidence. I think that’s how elections should be run.”
Now, though, DeSantis — who announced the arrests in a Broward County courtroom flanked by police officers — apparently believes there is so much voter fraud in Florida that this is just “the opening salvo” for the new Office of Election Crimes and Security.
The arrests were in five counties — Hillsborough, Orange, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade — where the majority of registered voters are Democrats. The announcement came just days before the Aug. 23 primary, and it was made in a county considered the biggest stronghold of Democratic votes.
The people arrested were convicted of either murder or sexual assault — the worst of the worst, in other words. Both categories are excluded from the state’s constitutional Amendment 4 that restores felons’ voting rights. So who could possibly be against them being charged?
But was it fraud? Or was it actually confusion, aided by the state’s own foot-dragging when it came to implementing that 2018 constitutional amendment?
Five of the people arrested told the Miami Herald they didn’t know they weren’t eligible, assuming that if their voter-registration forms were approved, they were free to cast ballots. One man said he was renewing his driver’s license when a man at a voter-registration booth convinced him he was eligible to vote. Another said she mistakenly thought her rights were reestablished under Amendment 4, the felon-voting rights amendment approved by about 65% of Floridians. The law doesn’t apply to those convicted of murder or sex crimes.
‘Granted some grace’
Sen. Jeff Brandes, the St. Petersburg Republican who wrote the bill implementing Amendment 4, said on Twitter that lawmakers expected that, “Those ineligible would be granted some grace by the state if they registered without intent to commit voter fraud. Some of the individuals did check with [Supervisors of Election] and believed they could register. #Intentmatters.”
Brandes, who is not running for reelection, also said Florida’s secretary of state “should be running all new voter registrations against a felon database and confirming they are eligible. Most of the individuals are simply ignorant of the law and have no intent to commit voter fraud, they just want to start a new chapter of life.”
The Editorial Board reached out to Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd with questions Monday but did not receive answers.
Voter fraud should be rooted out, of course. But the force of the law — and the heft of this new elections office — should be equally applied. Where’s the determination to go after ghost candidates? Former Miami-Dade state Sen. Frank Artiles is still accused of recruiting and paying a no-party candidate, Alexis Pedro Rodriguez, to sway the outcome of a Miami-Dade state Senate race.
And there was also the case of those Republican Party canvassers who illegally switched the party affiliations of more than 100 elderly Miami-Dade residents last year without their consent. Could we have a courtroom press conference on that? Or when a handful of residents of The Villages in Central Florida were arrested on charges they cast more than one ballot in the 2020 election?
The kind of voter fraud being targeted in the cases announced by DeSantis should be caught at the state level. Instead, the state fails to deal with the problem, the governor takes credit for “fixing” it — and formerly incarcerated people who have legitimately reestablished the right to vote are left wondering if they should risk their own liberty to cast a ballot.
