Florida Cops *Actually Embarrassed* To Be Part Of Ron DeSantis Felon-Vote Crackdown

Our favorite cops, at least until they inevitably Milkshake Duck.

Back in August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a big important photo op with members of his Election Police to claim he had kept voters safe from rampant voter fraud, explaining that his brand new $1.1 million law enforcement agency had arrested 20 convicted felons who voted, even though by law they had not had their voting rights restored.

Almost immediately, though, the arrests — many involving early-morning SWAT raids, with helicopters whirring low over back yards — started looking pretty stinky. Many of those arrested said that they hadn't intended to break the law, that they'd been encouraged by county voting officials to register and vote — and that they'd received voter ID cards from government agencies that hadn't flagged them as ineligible to vote. That makes prosecution unlikely, since Florida's voting fraud statute requires proof of criminal intent for a conviction.

Read More:

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Today, the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times report jointly on newly released body cam video of arrests in Hillsborough County back in August, obtained through public records requests. (Florida, for now at least, still has a very robust public records law; we don't doubt DeSantis will work on fixing that .) The arrests, the papers note, "were carried out by state police officers accompanied by local law enforcement," and in some cases the cops seem downright apologetic to those they arrested, as if the cops knew darn well they were serving politically motivated warrants.

The story notes that "Of the 19 people arrested, 12 were registered as Democrats and at least 13 are Black, the Herald/Times found." This video shows two arrestees being completely confused as they're arrested, and police seeming almost apologetic; in the second clip, the cop goes out of his way to assure Romona Oliver, 55, that the warrant will be an "ROR" — release on recognizance — and that once she's booked, she can go home. All she can say is "Oh my God."

“This is wild!! https: //t.co/nRoMggpAsp”

— philip lewis (@philip lewis) 1666096165 

The story adds that when she was informed the warrant was for voting illegally in 2020, a third-degree felony, Oliver replied "Voter fraud? I voted, but I ain’t commit no fraud.” Not, surprisingly, "Curses, I have been found out!"

Like many of those arrested, Ms. Oliver was registered to vote and kept on voter rolls even though she was ineligible, because Florida is helpful that way.

Oliver, who served 18 years in prison on a second-degree murder charge, registered to vote at the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles on Feb. 14, 2020. Six months later, she updated her address and completed another registration form.

After brief eligibility checks by the Department of State — which reports to DeSantis and is responsible for cleaning the rolls of ineligible voters — she was given a voter ID card both times.

Eventually, two years after she'd registered, the state removed her from voter rolls this year, in March.

At his presser in August, DeSantis proclaimed that the people scooped up by cops that day would "pay the price" for their misdeeds, because that made him look very Tough On Election Fraud — although even the early coverage of the arrests reported court documents showing that in most of the arrests, the defendants said that "at least one official government body — in most cases a local election supervisor — incorrectly indicated to them they could vote, including allowing them to register and sending them voter cards in the mail."

Let's also just hop in to remind you once more that DeSantis didn't hold a press conference to announce the arrests of those retirees who voted twice for Trump and got off with pre-trial intervention. They don't count, silly, because they were not Voting While Black.

 As we've noted, Florida's 2018 constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to felons who've served their time has turned out to be incredibly confusing, with no easy way for former felons to know whether they're actually eligible to vote. Amendment 4 specifically excluded those convicted of murder or sex crimes from having their voting rights restored, but confusion about the law is widespread, even among state and county elections officials who allowed or even encouraged people to go ahead and register, and if they weren't eligible, then their registration would just be cancelled, easy peasy.

A recording by Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies even records one cop commiserating with Nathan Hart, who explained, after being handcuffed, how he came to vote in 2020:

As he stood handcuffed, he told officers that he signed up to vote at the encouragement of somebody at “the driver’s license place.” Records show it was in March 2020.

“I said, ‘I’m a convicted felon, I’m pretty sure I can’t,’” Hart, a registered sex offender, told officers. “He goes, ‘Well, are you still on probation?’”

Hart’s probation had ended a month earlier, Hart recalled. The person told him to sign up anyway.

“He said, ‘Well, just fill out this form, and if they let you vote, then you can,’” Hart said. “‘If they don’t, then you can’t.’”

“Then there’s your defense,” one of the officers replied. “You know what I’m saying? That sounds like a loophole to me.”

“Well, we can hope,” Hart said.

That's now my favorite cop, as long as we don't find out next week the same deputy is a Nazi.

The Herald-Times report notes that the cop was giving fairly useful legal advice there, since under Florida law, a voter must "willfully" vote while knowing they're ineligible, a state of mind that's hard to reconcile with having an official voting card from the state. The story notes that prosecutors in Lake County decided not to prosecute six former sex offenders for exactly that reason, as a letter from prosecutor Jonathan Olson explained.

Noting that Florida law specifies that "no one will be convicted of a crime because of a mistake or because he does something innocently, not realizing what he was doing," Olson states that all six of the offenders "appear to have been encouraged to vote by various mailings and misinformation. Each were given voter registration cards which would lead one to believe they could legally vote in the election." For that reason, Olson said, "The evidence fails to show willful actions on a part of these individuals."

There's your defense, for sure. That's what Mark Rankin, the attorney for Ms. Oliver, the second person seen in the video up top, believes; he added that

he thinks DeSantis’ election security force chose these 20 in particular because the public would not have sympathy for people who were convicted of murder or sexual offenses. During a news conference announcing the arrests, DeSantis noted their criminal records.

“That’s not an accident,” Rankin said. “That’s a political strategy.”

We'd add that Florida's confusing laws also exclude voting by felons who have completed their sentences but haven't paid all fines and fees, but gosh, nobody in that category was among those arrested in August.

Without clearer evidence that the defendants intended to vote illegally, it seems pretty likely the cases against them will fall apart, but by then, the midterm elections will have been long over, and isn't that really the point anyway?

[ Miami Herald ]

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