Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that state agents were arresting 20 Florida felons who he said voted illegally in 2020, declaring it the first step in what he promised would be an overdue effort to ensure election integrity.
The number of arrests is miniscule compared to the 11.1 million Floridians who voted in the 2020 presidential election in Florida. But DeSantis said the effort shouldn’t be judged that way. “So it’s not just going to be 20 arrests. This is the opening salvo of an office that was just set up on July 1,” DeSantis said. “This is not the sum total of 2020.”
He promised more prosecutions to come, of felons who aren’t allowed to vote, people who voted in Florida and other states, and people who aren’t U.S. citizens.
“I am pretty confident you’ll see prosecutions. Not necessarily tomorrow, but in the relatively near future,” DeSantis said.
Peter Antonacci, the director of the new state Office of Election Crimes and Security, later told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that a large number of potentially illegal votes are being investigated.
“We’re working with the numbers and the numbers are shocking. A lot of people are voting that should not vote,” Antonacci said. “The numbers are substantial.” He didn’t provide an estimate.
Republicans cheer
The question of election integrity — and the suggestion that there are big problems in the system — have been festering for years among Republican political activists. But it’s become a burning issue for many Republican voters since former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and falsely claimed it was tainted.
DeSantis said even a small number of improper votes could change the outcome of some elections — pointing to the 2021 special congressional primary in Broward and Palm Beach counties, which was decided by just five votes.
DeSantis made his announcement in a courtroom in the Broward County Courthouse, bringing with him a squad of top state officials — the attorney general, the secretary of state, the acting director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Antonacci. A line of 14 Broward sheriff’s deputies, none of whom had any other role in the event, were spread in a row behind the governor and the others.
The courtroom was packed with dozens of invited guests, including many leading Republican Party activists and candidates from Broward and Palm Beach counties. Check-in duties for the official, governmental event, were handled by a top Republican party leader from each county.
Adding to the campaign-style feel of the event, large signs proclaiming “My Vote Counts” with DeSantis’ signature printed at the bottom, were distributed to audience members while they waited. And the crowd cheered many of DeSantis’ announcements.
DeSantis said Florida “did do a good job” in the 2020 election, but added “you don’t just sit back and kick your feet up and rest on your laurels.”
Political theater
Democrats saw Thursday’s effort as political.
“To me, it felt like political theater a little bit,” said Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott, a Democrat who wasn’t invited. The governor’s office depicted the event as a “major announcement,” but Scott said it wasn’t anything of the sort. “There was no major announcement made today,” he said.
That doesn’t mean county elections officials don’t care about ensuring fair and accurate elections. “We all care about election integrity,” he said.
Mitch Ceasar, a former Broward Democratic chairman, got a seat in the back of the courtroom. Ceasar said it felt like a “Republican rally,” citing the composition of the audience and the signs.
He said it appeared to be an attempt by the governor — a possible 2024 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination — to appeal to his party’s national base. “I think that’s what’s occurred here today.”
Ceasar, an attorney, is a legal representative for U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Miramar, who won the five-vote race last year.
Andrea Mercado, executive director of the left-leaning organization Florida Rising, denounced DeSantis in a statement.
“DeSantis showed in his new political stunt staged in the Broward County Courthouse a desperate effort to demonstrate the need for his private police force,” she said. “He will try to create hysteria around fraud in order to further disenfranchise Black and Brown voters.”
U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, said in a statement the DeSantis move was “about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters, and his desire to run for president, not securing elections.”
Scott speculation
Leading up to the DeSantis appearance, there was speculation online from political and news media sources that the governor was going to take some kind of action against Scott, the Broward elections supervisor.
DeSantis said he was told, on his way in, that there were media reports that he would be “yanking the supervisor. That was not the reason for this.”
But, he added, election supervisors “have certain duties under the law, and they should just all be mindful of that. But there’s nothing specific … in terms of the Broward (elections supervisor).”
Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner and candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, was among those who fueled that speculation.
“Getting word that DeSantis may be taking over or interfering with the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office in the middle of an election. If true, he better have a damn good reason for it. And you know he won’t,” Fried wrote on Twitter.
State Rep. Chip LaMarca, R-Lighthouse Point, who stood next to DeSantis at the Thursday event, has some disagreements with some of the arrangements, such as polling place changes, Scott has implemented. But, he said, he has confidence that Scott is conducting the election competently and accurately — “until I have reason to feel differently.”
Richard DeNapoli, the state Republican committeeman, who was also at the event, wasn’t as confident. “It’s to be determined,” he said.
Elections force
The arrests, which DeSantis said were being carried out by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, are the first public action that stems from the new state Office of Election Crimes and Security that Republicans who control the state Legislature created this year at the governor’s request.
Creation of the Office of the Election Crimes and Security has raised suspicions among Democrats, who have pointed to Florida’s elections in recent years, which have had only isolated problems with alleged fraud.
DeSantis appointed Antonacci as director of that office in July.
“This is a special day. This is the day we begin taking fraud seriously by assigning consequences to bad acts,” Antonacci said at the news conference.
Antonacci said 65 of the county’s 67 elections supervisors were getting letters directing them to preserve records related to people his office has identified as possibly voting illegally. Antonacci was the appointed Broward supervisor of elections from late 2018 through the 2020 election.
“At the SOE office we just did not have that and I don’t think any SOE office has that but it’s been needing to be done for a long long time,” Antonacci said.
He said his office is “building out” the technological capability, by matching lists and data, to find instances of felons improperly voting and people who vote in other states and also vote in Florida.
Felon voting
In 2018, voters approved an amendment to the Florida Constitution ordering restoration of voting rights for felons who have served their sentences. It excludes murderers and sex offenders, the category of felon-voters involved in Thursday’s announcement.
They were charged with voter fraud, a third-degree felony punishable by up to a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
“They did not go through any process. They did not get their voting rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyway,” DeSantis said at the news conference. “That is against the law and now they will pay the price.”
Late Thursday afternoon, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement released a list of 17 people the agency arrested in five counties, while saying the remaining three people still have outstanding arrest warrants on charges of voting illegally in the 2020 election.
Among those arrested in Broward was Nathaniel Singleton, 71, who was convicted on Feb. 15, 1996, of second-degree murder, making him ineligible to get his voting rights restored, records show. But he filled out a voter registration form in October 2019, saying he was eligible to vote, an affidavit said. He voted in the August primary and November general elections in 2020, an affidavit said.
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