Sunshine Sentinel

Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced the arrests of 20 ex-felons on charges of voter fraud.

An Aug. 18 release from DeSantis' office stated the individuals were previously disqualified from voting due to convictions of murder or a felony sexual offence but still voted.

The announcement was met with disparaging remarks, including renewed charges of voter suppression, in the mainstream media. Voter integrity advocates have a different take.

“Systematic efforts to prosecute election lawbreakers is critical to good deterrence, which in turn raises confidence in the quality of our elections,” Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general and national chair of the Election Transparency Initiative, wrote in an email to the Sunshine Sentinel. “Kudos to Gov. DeSantis - again!”

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, predicted that news of additional arrests will be in the offing as the four-month old office behind the arrests, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, continues to ramp up its efforts.

“I suspect we’ll see more arrests since this office is just getting on its feet,” he told the Sunshine Sentinel.

“Serious investigation into potential election fraud, or other election crimes, is significant,” he added. “Unfortunately, serious allegations of fraud often are not investigated for various reasons.”

DeSantis, a Republican, signed legislation creating the new enforcement office in late April.

“Twenty years ago, nobody thought Florida was a prime example of how to conduct elections, but we have become a national leader by running the most secure elections in the country,” DeSantis said at the time. “We need to do more to ensure our elections remain secure. We have ended ballot harvesting, stopped drop boxes and the mass mailing of ballots, and banned Zuckerbucks, and this bill will give us more resources to make sure bad actors are held accountable.”

But critics have said the office was overkill since voter fraud was rare.

"The only thing I can think is we are motivated by the 'Big Lie,'” state Sen. Lori Berman (D-Boynton Beach) told Florida Politics after the Florida Legislature approved the legislation creating the office in March. "We know voter fraud is extremely rare. I just don't understand why we are going to be taking our taxpayer money and creating this quote 'police force.'"

A November 2021 report by voter integrity group the Public Interest Legal Foundation shows that voter fraud in Florida occurs more frequently than reported but doesn't make news since it's not prosecuted.

In research for the report, PILF asked the larger Florida counties for information regarding referrals to prosecutors before and around the 2020 Election.

PILF said that it received documents detailing 156 referrals from nine county supervisors of elections about potential criminal election law violations. A tenth county, Hillsborough, told PILF that its policy was not to notify prosecutors of suspected violations.

“Critics of the election integrity movement argue that not enough voter fraud and related crimes occur to justify modern protections like voter ID at the polling place or with absentee ballots,” the report said. “But such critics do not acknowledge that election officials are regularly making discoveries they feel are worth their local prosecutors’ attention. PILF followed these referrals through Florida criminal databases and court records where available and found little follow-through from prosecuting authorities.”