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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.
I'd propose that Walker is "Making His Record" for a dispute about voter-id that will happen sometime in the next year or two.
The basic anti-voter-id argument starts with two claims:
There's no proof that anyone votes illegally
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
If Walker does nothing, his opponents can run with those two claims and he has to make some abstract argument about how secure elections are essential to get the losing side to accept their loss as legitimate. And that argument is going to suck for him.
If I were in Walker's position (and allowed to influence prosecutions) I'd tell the prosecutors to quietly offer some amazingly generous plea-deals. Let the felons go in front of a judge, admit that they voted illegally and pay token fine. Then the prosecutor can give a press conference where she blames election officials for giving her a hard-to-win case via their bad information.
Once that happens, Walker can claim that he uncovered and prosecuted dozens of cases of election fraud and that this proves the need for more robust and rapidly-updated systems for verifying voters. Now, his opponent's argument morphs to:
Dozens isn't very many people; there's no proof that illegal votes shifted an election and anyway half of the people accused of voting illegally plead down to some other offense.
Requiring ID will stop some eligible voters from voting; perhaps the number is small but every vote is sacred.
The political advantage is that position #1 ("We don't care very much about tens of votes" / "This only matters if if shifts an election") now exists in tension with position #2 ("Every vote matters").
...Walker?
It might be helpful to learn about why the voter restoration system in Florida is a mess right now, because it's nonsensical to claim voter ID is somehow a solution. Here's the 125-page court opinion that details the problems on Pg 53:
And see page 65 about the workload the state estimated for itself:
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