Who gave those ex-cons that Florida just arrested the crazy idea they could legally vote? Turns out: the state of Florida. All 18 of those arrested told state investigators they received a voter registration card from their local elections office. And officials in Tallahassee acknowledged it was the responsibility of the state, not the counties, to flag those felons ineligible to vote. The revelations further expose the arrests as an election-year sham and the weaponization under Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida’s new elections police.
Only last month, the governor stood alongside the state’s top elections officials to announce the arrests of 20 people for voting illegally, in what officials described as the opening salvo of a crackdown on election fraud. But the milk soured fast as the state’s own culpability has come into view, and now advocates are urging those arrested to fight the charges, while the Senate sponsor of the felon voting law is musing that the operation may produce no convictions.
“The more that comes out on the arrests, the more I believe the individuals involved had no knowledge or intent to violate the law,” state Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, wrote in a post on Twitter. Because “the state has to prove intent,” he wondered: “Were these people ever notified that they were not eligible to vote? And can we prove that they did it willingly?”
Those questions should have been thoroughly researched before anyone was arrested. All of those arrested told investigators they believed they were authorized to vote by someone in government, according to a new report by the Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau. According to the charging documents, some were told they were authorized to vote by multiple government officials. Documents show that Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents knew that almost all of the people arrested Aug. 18 thought they had the right to vote in 2020 because they had received voter registration cards.
“Why are we prosecuting people who made an honest mistake?” asked Mark Rankin, a Tampa-based attorney, representing a 55-year-old seamstress caught in the dragnet.
That’s a great question with a terrible answer. Florida voters passed Amendment 4 in 2018, aimed at automatically restoring voting rights for most felons. But those convicted of murder and some sexual offenses were specifically excluded, and the Legislature also passed a bill requiring felons to complete “all terms” of their sentence, including paying all costs, fees and restitution.
The only problem was that lawmakers didn’t bother creating a central database to determine whether felons qualified or not. By May 2020, the Department of State had a backlog of 85,000 people it needed to verify and potentially remove from the voting rolls, state elections director Maria Matthews told a federal judge that month, a backlog she described as almost hopelessly large.
The 18 people arrested were registered to vote between late 2018 and 2020 during a period when the Department of State was struggling to weed out ineligible voters. Under Florida law, it is the state’s responsibility to screen ineligible voters and inform county supervisors to remove those people from the rolls. And until that occurs, those individuals “are eligible voters,” state officials declared. Some of those targeted by DeSantis remained on the rolls until this year. Of those arrested, Brandes predicts: “They’re going to find letters and they’re going to find video, and they’re going to find stuff that points to: We made a mistake.”
This is not sloppy policing but an unconscionable use of police powers to intimidate voters and instill distrust in elections. It makes the Republican-sponsored Election Crimes and Security Office appear like a hack operation. We can only hope the courts do what the governor and Legislature failed to do by protecting due process and ensuring that government is held accountable for its own mistakes.
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Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Editor of Editorials Graham Brink, Sherri Day, Sebastian Dortch, John Hill, Jim Verhulst and Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news.
