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In August, Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced that the state of Florida was arresting 20 individuals who had knowingly registered and voted illegally within the 2020 elections. He stated these arrests had been “simply step one” in his try to crackdown on alleged wide-scale voter fraud within the state, even though there isn’t any proof to show voter fraud is a significant concern within the state.
These snared that day weren’t plotters of some large-scale election rigging scheme: The general public arrested had beforehand been convicted of homicide or felony intercourse offenses in Florida, which makes them routinely ineligible to vote there even after they’ve accomplished their sentences, probations, and paid different court-related charges.
Final week the Tampa Bay Instances launched body-camera footage recorded by native police as they made just a few arrests. It precipitated an uproar. The movies confirmed arrests of arrestees reacting with real shock and confusion on the fees. The police themselves additionally appear confused and even sympathetic at instances.
The large query the video itself and the unfavourable response to it presents is: If these individuals weren’t allowed to vote within the first place, why had been they being held to account when the state didn’t do correct background checks?
“Why would you let me vote if I wasn’t in a position to vote?” requested Tony Patterson, one of many individuals getting arrested on video.
In keeping with Lawrence Mower, the Tallahassee correspondent for the Tampa Bay Instances and the Miami Herald who first obtained the footage of the arrests, it’s as a result of the legal guidelines round who has eligibility to vote in Florida are extraordinarily complicated and have been since 2018. Mower spoke to Vox’s Sean Rameswaram earlier this week for an episode of In the present day, Defined — Vox’s day by day information explainer podcast — concerning the arrests, and DeSantis’s motivation for kick-starting this system that led to them.
Beneath is an excerpt of the dialog, edited for size and readability. There’s far more within the full podcast, so obtain In the present day, Defined wherever you get podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
Sean Rameswaram
What was the thought course of behind releasing the video of those arrests?
Lawrence Mower
We put this on the market considering that that is totally different. You already know, witnessing these individuals get arrested for voting is simply not one thing you see every single day. You take a look at somebody like Romona Oliver, a 55-year-old lady, spent 18 years in jail for second-degree homicide. She’s received a job. She’s been remarried since leaving jail. She’s arrested on her approach to work. She appears to be like like a grandma.
In one other case of Tony Patterson, a man who’s a registered intercourse offender. He’s stopped outdoors of his home and police inform him you’ve received a warrant to your arrest. And he says, “What for?” You may see from the video that he can’t actually consider it. There’s one other telling video, a man by the title of Nathan Har. He was given a voter ID card regardless that he was not allowed to vote. The state did an preliminary examine and cleared him and he voted in 2020. The workplace arresting him even tells him that his story seems like a loophole.
Sean Rameswaram
You additionally write that police appear sympathetic towards the individuals getting arrested.
Lawrence Mower
Yeah, that’s fairly extraordinary. It’s not every single day that you simply hear a police officer lending recommendation on a intercourse offender’s protection whereas they’re arresting that individual. So native police appear perhaps skeptical or nearly sympathetic to those individuals’s conditions right here. It’s not the sort of typical notion you have got right here once you hear “murderers and intercourse offenders.”
[Editor’s note: You can hear clips of the reactions being described in the Today, Explained episode or watch the videos here on the Tampa Bay Times’s website.]
Sean Rameswaram
What’s it concerning the reactions within the movies that causes shock?
Lawrence Mower
These individuals’s reactions problem the legal guidelines that they’re being accused of violating. They’re being accused of willfully violating the legislation, willfully voting after they had been ineligible. And I imply, simply take a look at the video. Does it look like these individuals knew that they had been violating the legislation on the time? I believe there’s most likely an actual query there for lots of people, maybe even a jury, whether or not or not these individuals, you realize, appeared to have willfully violated the legislation.
Sean Rameswaram
To grasp what’s occurring in these movies, you must perceive Florida’s Modification 4. Are you able to remind us what that modification did?
Lawrence Mower
It allowed anybody with a felony conviction to vote. If you happen to didn’t have a felony intercourse offense in your file, for those who didn’t have a homicide in your file, and for those who had accomplished all phrases of your sentence. You already know, Modification 4, when it handed [via ballot initiative in 2018], was thought-about the best growth of democracy in america for the reason that civil rights motion. We’re speaking as much as 1.4 million individuals in Florida, presumably getting the suitable to vote again.
Sean Rameswaram
Governor DeSantis comes into workplace in 2019. What’s his relationship to Modification 4?
Lawrence Mower
He was in opposition to the modification, like many of the prime Republicans had been right here. And DeSantis inspired the legislature to attract a really laborious line on the fines and charges problem. He’s the one who actually pushed the legislature to require individuals with felony convictions to repay all fines and charges and restitution to victims earlier than being allowed to vote.
So DeSantis units up a brand new workplace to research voter fraud, proper?
Lawrence Mower
The Workplace of Election Crimes and Safety was one thing that DeSantis requested from the legislature in 2021. This can be a first-of-its-kind workplace, and these had been a few of the issues that some within the legislature had when this workplace was created. They had been questioning — how is that this workplace going for use? As a result of that is placing fairly a little bit of energy right into a politician’s fingers.
Sean Rameswaram
Okay, and I think about this workplace is how we get to those arrests?
Lawrence Mower
In August, DeSantis held a press convention to announce the primary actions by the Workplace of Election Crimes and Safety. He pronounces 20 individuals getting arrested. It’s no debate. They weren’t allowed to vote, however however they got voter ID playing cards cleared by the secretary of state and weren’t stopped from going right into a polling place and casting a poll in 2020. However, DeSantis pronounces these arrests, touts that these had been the primary actions by this new workplace. You already know that these persons are going to pay the worth.
Sean Rameswaram
So what’s clear is that for those who purchase that there was widespread election fraud within the 2020 election, thus far, arresting 20 individuals who appear to have been confused about whether or not or not they’d the suitable to vote isn’t actually getting at some bigger conspiracy to commit fraud in elections, proper?
Lawrence Mower
No, it’s not. You already know, DeSantis since 2020 has been below stress from conservatives in Florida to do an audit of Florida’s 2020 election, which President Trump gained handily in Florida. It was a blowout by Florida requirements. So it’s sort of no secret from the political class that this was a response to stress from the suitable to do one thing about voter fraud. And these 20 arrests don’t level to any sort of concerted fraud right here.
Sean Rameswaram
Proper, so what do these arrests truly level to?
Lawrence Mower
It sort of factors to faults with DeSantis’s personal workplace, in actual fact. You already know, the essential query right here is, why had been these individuals allowed to register to vote within the first place? Why can’t the secretary of state — once more, that is DeSantis’s personal workplace — why can’t they nonetheless let you know once you register to vote whether or not or not you’re eligible to vote?
Sean Rameswaram
What’s DeSantis after that he’ll indulge the individuals who actually need to see him police elections this manner — once you admit that he doesn’t even appear to essentially care that a lot about it?
Lawrence Mower
It’s no secret to anybody in Florida, a lot much less nationally, that DeSantis needs to run for president. And, after all, he’s operating for reelection this yr. And so this is a matter wherein he could also be perceived as susceptible, and it’s one thing that he has some management over. So he can create an election safety drive and make arrests, which will get headlines, which makes it appear like he’s doing one thing.
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