Sunshine Sentinel

The head of nationwide voter integrity group the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) has praised Florida state lawmakers for being the first to approve legislation to create an office dedicated to prosecuting violations of state election laws.

“The move, currently led by Florida, to apply real-world consequences to those who violate our election laws is critical to establishing Americans' confidence in our elections,” Ken Cuccinelli, the national ETI chairman and former Virginia attorney general, told the Sunshine Sentinel. “We applaud this good-government step being taken by the Florida legislature and Gov. [Ron] DeSantis.”

Cuccinelli describes himself as "fighting on the front lines of the conservative movement" for more than 20 years.

DeSantis, a Republican, is almost certain to sign the legislation, Senate Bill 524, which contains other election reform measures as well, into law.

The bill establishes the Office of Elections Crimes and Security, which would review allegations of fraud and conduct preliminary investigations into potential election law violations or irregularities.

A few days after the Florida legislation reached DeSantis’ desk, Georgia's Republican-controlled House approved a similar measure. Under the bill, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) would have the authority to investigate alleged violations of the state’s election law.  

Democrats have argued that the creation of separate election law enforcement offices are unnecessary since election violations, which are minimal, can be pursued by the offices of existing prosecutors. Republicans counter that prosecutors habitually fail to pursue election fraud charges.

Many of the Republican calls for tighter election regulations followed former President Donald Trump's baseless charges that he lost the 2020 election due to massive voter fraud.

An Associated Press analysis of alleged voter fraud cases in six battleground states during the 2020 presidential election, including Georgia, found fewer than 475 cases, nowhere near enough to have thrown the election in Trump's favor.

The results of an investigation by voter integrity group the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found “little follow through by prosecuting authorities” in the nine Florida counties it requested information regarding referrals to prosecutors around the November 2020 general election. 

The investigation showed that the most common types of potential or alleged crimes discovered by officials were non-citizen registration and voting, double voting and vote-by-mail violations.

“It is unknown why law enforcement did not pursue these matters. Justice does not prevail when prosecutors never receive referrals or receive them and allow them to gather dust,” the study stated in an introduction to the findings. “There is no deterrence in a system where potential election criminals know there is no chance of being prosecuted.

The Florida legislation also increases criminal penalties for ballot harvesting (third-party collection of mail ballots), tightens voter ID for mail ballots, further restricts private money in the management of elections, and bans ranked-choice voting, where voters don’t choose one candidate but rank them according to preference.

“The epidemic of eroded public trust and confidence in our elections is very real and the concerns of normal Americans are profoundly legitimate, but through their determination Florida is helping ensure everyone’s voice is heard at the polls—and not diluted,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “The landmark reforms of 2021 and 2022 have gone a long way toward healing the concerns of millions of disenfranchised American voters, but these efforts wouldn’t be complete without the enactment of true voter I.D. protections for absentee ballots, and ensuring that every legal mail-in vote is counted fairly and openly.”