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 “just the first step” in his try and crackdown on alleged wide-scale voter fraud within the state, although there isn’t a proof to show voter fraud is a serious concern within the state.
Those snared that day weren’t plotters of some large-scale election rigging scheme: Most of the folks arrested had beforehand been convicted of homicide or felony intercourse offenses in Florida, which makes them mechanically ineligible to vote there even after they’ve accomplished their sentences, probations, and paid different court-related charges.
Last week the Tampa Bay Times launched body-camera footage recorded by native police as they made a number of arrests. It triggered an uproar. The movies confirmed arrests of arrestees reacting with real shock and confusion on the prices. The police themselves additionally appear confused and even sympathetic at occasions.
The massive query the video itself and the adverse response to it presents is: If these folks 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 able to vote?” requested Tony Patterson, one of many folks getting arrested on video.
According to Lawrence Mower, the Tallahassee correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times 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 Today, Explained — Vox’s each day information explainer podcast — in regards to the arrests, and DeSantis’s motivation for kick-starting this system that led to them.
Below is an excerpt of the dialog, edited for size and readability. There’s far more within the full podcast, so obtain Today, Explained 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 pondering that that is completely different. You know, witnessing these folks get arrested for voting is simply not one thing you see on daily basis. You have a look at somebody like Romona Oliver, a 55-year-old girl, 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 method to work. She seems like a grandma.
In one other case of Tony Patterson, a man who’s a registered intercourse offender. He’s stopped exterior of his home and police inform him you’ve received a warrant to your arrest. And he says, “What for?” You can see from the video that he can’t actually imagine it. There’s one other telling video, a man by the identify of Nathan Har. He was given a voter ID card despite the fact that he was not allowed to vote. The state did an preliminary verify 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 folks getting arrested.
Lawrence Mower
Yeah, that’s fairly extraordinary. It’s not on daily basis that you just 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 virtually sympathetic to those folks’s conditions right here. It’s not the form of typical notion you’ve got right here if you hear “murderers and sex 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 is it in regards to the reactions within the movies that causes shock?
Lawrence Mower
These folks’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 have a look at the video. Does it appear to be these folks knew that they had been violating the legislation on the time? I believe there’s in all probability an actual query there for lots of people, even perhaps a jury, whether or not or not these folks, you realize, appeared to have willfully violated the legislation.
Sean Rameswaram
To perceive what’s occurring in these movies, it’s a must to perceive Florida’s Amendment 4. Can you remind us what that modification did?
Lawrence Mower
It allowed anybody with a felony conviction to vote. If you didn’t have a felony intercourse offense in your document, in case you didn’t have a homicide in your document, and in case you had accomplished all phrases of your sentence. You know, Amendment 4, when it handed [via ballot initiative in 2018], was thought of the best enlargement of democracy within the United States because the civil rights motion. We’re speaking as much as 1.4 million folks in Florida, presumably getting the precise to vote again.
Sean Rameswaram
Governor DeSantis comes into workplace in 2019. What’s his relationship to Amendment 4?
Lawrence Mower
He was in opposition to the modification, like a lot of the high Republicans had been right here. And DeSantis inspired the legislature to attract a really exhausting line on the fines and charges concern. He’s the one who actually pushed the legislature to require folks 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 Office of Election Crimes and Security was one thing that DeSantis requested from the legislature in 2021. This is a first-of-its-kind workplace, and these had been a few of the considerations that some within the legislature had when this workplace was created. They had been questioning — how is that this workplace going for use? Because that is placing fairly a little bit of energy right into a politician’s arms.
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 Office of Election Crimes and Security. He broadcasts 20 folks getting arrested. It’s no debate. They weren’t allowed to vote, however nonetheless 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. Nevertheless, DeSantis broadcasts these arrests, touts that these had been the primary actions by this new workplace. You know that these persons are going to pay the value.
Sean Rameswaram
So what’s clear is that in case you purchase that there was widespread election fraud within the 2020 election, to this point, arresting 20 individuals who appear to have been confused about whether or not or not they’d the precise to vote isn’t actually getting at some bigger conspiracy to commit fraud in elections, proper?
Lawrence Mower
No, it’s not. You know, DeSantis since 2020 has been below strain 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 form of no secret from the political class that this was a response to strain from the precise to do one thing about voter fraud. And these 20 arrests don’t level to any form of concerted fraud right here.
Sean Rameswaram
Right, so what do these arrests truly level to?
Lawrence Mower
It form of factors to faults with DeSantis’s personal workplace, in actual fact. You know, the essential query right here is, why had been these folks 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 if you register to vote whether or not or not you’re eligible to vote?
Sean Rameswaram
What is DeSantis after that he’ll indulge the individuals who actually need to see him police elections this manner — if you admit that he doesn’t even appear to actually care that a lot about it?
Lawrence Mower
It’s no secret to anybody in Florida, a lot much less nationally, that DeSantis desires to run for president. And, after all, he’s operating for reelection this 12 months. And so this is a matter during which 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 pressure and make arrests, which will get headlines, which makes it seem like he’s doing one thing.