Florida's GOP finds culprits in its war for election integrity

By now, all reality-attached sane people know that American elections up to and including 2020 have been mostly free and fair. The absence of evidence of widespread voter or vote fraud is overwhelming. Republicans looked long and hard for it, but they could not find it because it does not exist. The main exceptions come from reality-detached authoritarian Republicans and the insane ex-president himself. They tried to rig elections to get thousands of fraudulent votes. 

Election integrity is under attack by Republicans, not Democrats or independents. That is fact, not opinion.

Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector 

escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office 

before voting machine breach

The Republican Party, the real threat to election integrity, 

and proud of it! ©

Despite the evidence, Florida's Ron DeSantis, a prominent Republican dictator wannabe, formed a police task force to find, prosecute and punish voters who voted illegally. The effort has led to the arrest and prosecution of 20 people out of 11 million votes cast in 2020. The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:

As Republican activists waved signs saying “My Vote Counts,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) stood in a Broward County courtroom last month to tout the first deliverables from the state’s controversial election police squad. “They did not go through any process. They did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways. ... And now they’re going to pay the price,” he said of the 20 people arrested and charged with voting illegally in the 2020 elections. Mr. DeSantis revealed little about the individual cases — and no wonder. Many of those charged had no idea they were unable to vote; some had even received official government notifications that they were eligible. None of that seemed to matter to Mr. DeSantis, whose crackdown on voter fraud isn’t about a real threat to election integrity but rather his desire to score political points as he runs for reelection and considers a possible 2024 presidential bid.

Since Mr. DeSantis’s stage-managed news conference on Aug. 18, details about the people caught up in his cynical campaign have emerged. Many, as Politico reported, have little education and few financial resources and believed, based on interactions with election or other officials, that they were allowed to vote. Romona Oliver, newly released from prison after serving a 20-year murder sentence, went to the Hillsborough tax collector’s office to register to vote. She admitted to having a felony conviction when asked, but the official helping her submitted an application, and she soon received a voter card in the mail. Peter Washington, nearing the end of his 10-year sentence in 2006 for attempted sexual battery, was enrolled in a class to ease his reentry into society when he said a probation officer told him his civil rights would be automatically restored upon his release from prison. Once home years later, he received a voter registration form in the mail in 2019, filled it out and received a voter card from the Orange County supervisor of elections.

Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment permitting felons to regain their voting rights, but it doesn’t apply to those convicted of murder or sex crimes. Ignorance or confusion about the law doesn’t mean it was permissible for these people to vote. But it is a gross overreaction for them to be dragged from their homes in handcuffs at the crack of dawn, thrown into jail and publicly vilified. They face up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in prison.

Instead of spending $1.1 million on a special police unit to root out a problem that doesn’t exist — the 20 votes of those arrested last month — most of whom are Black — account for 0.00018 percent of the 11 million ballots cast in Florida in 2020 — the state would be better off using its money to create a system that can easily verify whether someone has the right to vote after serving time for a felony conviction. Yet Mr. DeSantis, who tried to thwart passage of the Florida constitutional amendment restoring many felons’ voting rights, clearly is not interested in making it easier for these people to vote. He would rather scare them away.

Even if the DeSantis vote fraud squad finds another 100 illegal votes, which is highly unlikely after all this time, it would still not amount to anything close to widespread voter fraud in 2020. Most of those illegal votes were honest mistakes, not a massive conspiracy to throw Florida elections to democrats. The Editorial Board sees gross overreaction in dragging these people from their homes in handcuffs, throwing them in jail and publicly vilifying them. Maybe if rich and/or powerful White collar criminals were treated the same way in Florida, it might not be as much an overreaction. 

The important point here is crystal clear. The Republican Party is authoritarian. The GOP is desperate to subvert free and fair elections. Ugly authoritarians like DeSantis are shocking and shameless in their blatant cynicism toward democracy and elections. DeSantis very much wants to be elected president. If he is, he will make damn sure that elections will have Republican Party style integrity. Elections will be rigged and Republicans will win, at least in red states where the GOP can properly rig elections.  

The open question is whether Republicans have properly rigged red state elections. We are probably going to find out in November.

Look, all I want to do is this. 

I just want to find, ahh, 11,780 . . votes, . . . .

VOTE FRAUD ALERT!!!

LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!