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Back in August 20 people were arrested in Florida as part of a sting operation on "voter fraud" heavily publicized by Gov. DeSantis. Each person had a felony conviction and voted, but I wrote about how each person was specifically told by election authorities that they were legally able to vote. The confusion stems from how felony voter right restoration was implemented in Florida, where the state insisted that everyone had to pay all outstanding fines while at the same time admitting it had no way of keeping track of all these fines.
A small update since then is that bodyworn video footage of the arrests has been released. The language in an arrest warrant issued by a court usually says something along the lines of "To every peace officer of blah blah, you are commanded to..." which means the decision to arrest is not discretionary. I've watched thousands of arrest videos by now and while the modal arrest is far less eventful that what the typical viral incident would have you believe, it's still an event that is inherently antagonistic. After all, the cop is placing handcuffs on you and taking you to jail, with serious retribution if you impede the process in any way.
I have never seen cops anywhere near as apologetic about an arrest as in the videos just released from Florida. They caught these people unaware outside of their homes, and as they explain the arrest warrant they pepper every sentence with "sir" and "m'am". When they explain that they're about to be handcuffed, they use "unfortunately" as a prefix. Thanks to qualified immunity along with the general deference courts give law enforcement, each cop would have had the legal authority to leg sweep each person and slam them to the ground if they displayed anything that could remotely be construed as resistance. Instead they take the time to calmly explain the process, including when they would likely be released, in a bid to secure as much of their cooperation as possible through what is understandably a distressing event for any person to go through. They're treated with astounding compassion. The people arrested start talking (of course they do), with one explaining how he was told he could legally vote, and the cop responds with "there's your defense". I've never seen a cop highlight legal defenses to the person they just arrested.
DeSantis is a Yale/Harvard educated former federal prosecutor. I would assume based on his background that he's not an idiot, and that he knows how criminal prosecutions work. If I keep my cynic hat on, DeSantis chose to make a big show of these arrests entirely as a means to appease the portion of the electorate that still believes the 2020 election was stolen and remains angry no one has gotten punished. But even so, what exactly was the follow-up supposed to be? Whatever charges one would levy against these people would require that you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they weren't allowed to vote but voted anyway, and how would any prosecutor counter the fact that election authorities approved their registration? What this does also just brings more attention to the confusing labyrinthian mess around court fines the state of Florida intentionally created as a hurdle for felons pursuing voter right restoration.
If the cops conducting the arrest are expressing this much skepticism about the charges, you can surmise how a random jury pool would react. These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.
Think on the meta level just a bit. As in, not about whether these twenty people themselves were or were not intentionally trying to commit a crime, and catching them is proof of anything.
From a pure signalling standpoint, if you want to prevent people from knowingly casting illegal votes and demonstrate that you are capable of enforcing this rule (i.e. detecting illegal votes), then yes, you have to arrest people who do cast illegal votes, even if they possess a defense for the action.
Especially since "I was told it was legal to cast my vote" is such an easy defense to invoke and hard to disprove otherwise. You show that you will STILL investigate such situations and try to verify the defense as valid.
Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?
Or would the effect be entirely minimal and worth disregarding?
Speaking purely from the political grandstanding perspective, it mostly makes DeSantis look silly and buffoonish: at the margin, it lost him votes, possibly even in future Republican primaries. You can talk about hypothetical second-order effects on marginal illegal voters all you want, but the public doesn't care, and it'll be hard to convince anyone that this escapade was DeSantis courageously trying to institute good policy despite any negative effects it might have on his grander political ambitions.
Find me a single likely voter who was actually swayed from voting for Desantis due to this action, I'll give you the point. Honest.
I doubt Desantis needs many extra votes given how he's got approximately zero chance of losing his re-election bid this year, though.
But if OTHER races end up being close, and he can dissuade fraudulent votes from being cast, well that is a serious benefit to people besides him.
HENCE: The Meta level analysis.
Desantis seems to actually care not just about looking good and winning his own elections, he seems to care about establishing systems which will, over a longer term, support his allies and thus increase the chances his goals will be achieved in the future.
Looking buffoonish for a month is a fine trade if you can bump your party's electoral chances by a few percentage points in the next election and every election to come.
If I can find a single felon who was considering casting a fraudulent vote who is now dissuaded, it would be strong evidence that the tactic worked.
Right, and scaring the shit out of anyone with a felony record about even thinking about voting (even if they are legally allowed to) is likely to have a beneficial effect for the Republican party's election chances. Do you disagree?
I would broaden it to "scare the shit out of anyone who was thinking of trying to fraudulently influence the election" at all.
This is a flex which shows "we can detect illegal votes and we WILL investigate illegal votes. Risk it at your peril."
My prediction is that there will be little fraud in the 2022 Florida elections. I DONT know how much occurred in prior elections. But there won't be much this time.
You keep dodging the question. People are going to jail because they believed bogus information given to them by the government. Do you or do you not support those prosecutions? If you do, can you explain exactly how prosecuting people for believing the government advances any causes?
I think that these guys should not be sent to jail.
I think if they can demonstrate that they were told that they were legally permitted to vote, and voted while under this belief, they should have their cases dropped.
Further, I think they should each sue the state of Florida for the hassle this imposed and other damages based on the theory of Malicious Prosecution.
I'd guess somewhere on the range of $10k to $25k would be appropriate damages.
So assuming all twenty were to sue, and all twenty were to win, and all twenty were to receive $25k, then the state of Florida should pay out that $500,000 to them immediately.
Or, in other terms pay out .002% of Florida's budget surplus
And that seems quite a worthwhile expenditure to avoid any major electoral fiascos in 2022.
It's apparently ok to file charges against people who are likely innocent because then they might sue the people who are actually responsible for this situation and then maybe those settlements will encourage better behavior from the government...you do see how convoluted that is, right?
The guy DeSantis picked to run Office of Election Crimes and Security explicitly told local election officials this wasn't their fault. It's the state government that is in charge of parsing through all the relevant records and giving a final answer to local officials. If this is an issue worth putting people in jail over why isn't DeSantis prosecuting his own administration officials? There's an obvious conflict of interest here, which I would think would severely undercut the idea that DeSantis' was acting in good faith when he chose to make a spectacle of these random people's arrests. I've explained what I believe DeSantis is doing — he's prosecuting these people to scare the hell out of any felon from even thinking about getting their voting rights reinstated, to appease his supporters who still believe in delusional election fraud theories, and also to distract from the problems his own government has in implementing Amendment 4 — and you haven't disavowed me of those beliefs. What do you think I'm missing?
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If only there was a voter role system that was actually kept up to date, such that these cases would be resolved weeks in advance, and any questionable points dealt with before the election... some kind of registry to vote, such as parties and most nations have...
But one party systematically refuses to allow either voter ID laws, or any securing of the voter registry... leaving effectively an honor system for voting in America. Well if you're going to leave it unsecure enough we're trusting felons' word as to whether or not they're entitled to vote, then there has to be consequences for being wrong.
You could have secure elections where none of these people would be able to vote at all unless it was explicitly signed off by an authority that they had cleared their felony restriction... instead you're taking them at their word, now its just down to whether there are consequences when you prove their word is wrong.
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I worked elections in Canada in another life... there was no way for anything like the regular "Mistakes" that happen in the American system because of all the ID and paperwork you are required to show and clerks required to document.
Somehow you missed the part where the government told these people they could vote, and you somehow also missed how Florida intentionally decided to implement restoration requirements everyone knew was going to be a mess. It might be useful for you to at least skim through the litigation that explained the problems. Here's an excerpt from pg 53:
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This wasn't an issue of ID, and these people were registered. That's why we have advocates saying things like:
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As a Republican, I agree that keeping criminals out of elections will disproportionately help my side.
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