August 19, 2022

"Florida officials have arrested and charged 20 people with felony convictions and charged them with illegal voting, Florida governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday...."

 The Guardian reports.

“They did not go through any process, they did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways. That is against the law and now they’re gonna pay the price for it,” DeSantis said. He also said all 20 had convictions for murder or sexual offenses, crimes that continue to result in a lifetime voting ban in the state....

The article says the rules for getting one's voting rights back can be confusing, but that's no response to DeSantis's point that these were people who did not go through any process. 

29 comments:

RideSpaceMountain said...

These are just the ones who got caught.

Gusty Winds said...

Is there a process dead people have to go through to regain or keep their voting rights in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, or is that just a benefit you enjoy if you happen to be a resident of on of those states when you die?

Individuals are encouraged by Democrats to break voting laws. City and County Clerks are encouraged to ignore and reinterpret voting laws however they see fit. Especially here in Wisconsin; blessed by our incompetent and corrupt Wisconsin Election Commission.

Voter fraud is an absolute reality in the United States. It is just more concentrated and coordinated in some States more than others. WI, MI, GA, AZ, and PA are the most infected.

Good for DeSantis.

J said...

Democrat voters.

Owen said...

Already the DeSantis critics are characterizing this catch of “only 20 election-law offenders” as proof that election law offenses in Florida are ever so rare, and DeSantis is wasting public funds and trust on a cruel and futile display of machismo.

Me, I am guessing it’s a useful a start on a chronic and somewhat-submerged issue. Nailing these offenders with some fanfare will send a message both to other felons and their enablers, and to the law-abiding electorate. Valuable data will be collected about the offenders’ deception and lessons will be learned about vulnerabilities in the voting accreditation process. It needs hardening everywhere. IMHO.

Net net: a good result. What are other states doing?

Bruce Hayden said...

I think that this is a good first step. Now thy should follow it by sending those who vote multiple times, regardless of their methodology, to prison.

Temujin said...

We have a nation full of politicians, corporate execs, judges, media opinion-makers, and others who think our laws are often inconvenient and get in the way of the fast moving trends in life. Or political movements. Or their personal or Party desires. One of the things I like best about Gov. DeSantis is that he is a smart man who understands the law, and sees his job as to protect his citizens through enforcement of those laws.

Yes- it's inconvenient to progressive journalists, politicians, school system employees. They don't really care for 'laws' as such. Just the Party. Always the Party.

I would truly love to see what DeSantis could do on a national level. It might shock some people. It might delight others. BTW- following the laws and enforcing them does not make one authoritarian. It's when you don't follow the laws and mandate that people follow your edicts instead, that you become authoritarian. Or should I say, totalitarian.

Jamie said...

I always notice the "gonna." I wonder whether the Guardian would have spelled it that way if Obama had elided "going to" the way most Americans do.

I predict that the number of accused - 20 - will be used as a humor-cudgel: oooooh, 20 whole instances of vote fraud! You Trumpians sure were right!

Gusty Winds said...

In 2020, Wisconsin had 121,251 ACTIVE voters on the voter rolls who have been registered between 110-119 years. Yes you read that right.

You can see it on page 4 in this report compiled by Jeff O’Donnell of legis.wisconisn.gov.

According to the Wisconsin Voter rolls 119,283 people registered to vote on 10-10-1918 and were still active in 2020. Obviously 18 years after 01-01-1900. This in a purple state where statewide outcomes are 5K to 20K votes.

Of course Politi”fact” rates this as false. They claim that “When a municipality’s system didn’t track a voter’s date of birth or initial date of registration, a default date was entered into the statewide system: 1/1/1900 for date of birth and 1/1/1918 for date of registration. Such placeholders for missing information have been used by other states as well.”

Bullshit. This is not benign. Whatever the reason for 120,000 active voters being listed as registering on 01-01-1918 it clearly shows the system is fucked, and completely open to fraud. This is just one example of dozens that are easily findable but wiped out as “no evidence” by MSM, NPR, and Milwaukee Journal lapdogs.

And if you didn't identify a person's birthdate when they registered, what else did you get wrong?? This is an acceptable practice?

The WEC didn’t clean up voter rolls until July or August of 2021. This was reported by WPR on 8/4/21. “Wisconsin election officials have removed roughly 206,000 people from voter rolls in the state as part of routine list maintenance, including about 30,000 voters who were part of a high-profile conflict ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Of course they did it AFTER the 2020 election. Not before.

TrespassersW said...

"The process for getting your voting rights restored is haaaaard, and the rules are confuuuusing!" they whined.

Just like the whining about requiring that voters prove that they are who they claim to be. Or following the ballot chain of custody rules. Etc., etc.

Why would someone rules that improve election integrity?

There's an obvious answer.

Owen said...

Temujin @ 8:20: What you said about the diff between enforcing the law (which others have made in a constitutionally correct way) and issuing arbitrary edicts on your own bootstrapped claim of authority, is IMHO exactly right. DeSantis gets it. Biden, Harris, their courtiers? Not so much.

Leland said...

De Santis is simply enforcing the law as written.

Jersey Fled said...

The Titanic only hit one iceberg. And most of it was unseen

Beasts of England said...

Good for DeSantis. Is he now officially worse than Trump?

Beasts of England said...

Good for DeSantis. Is he now officially worse than Trump?

Kevin said...

it's amazing what one can see when one truly desires to look.

Kevin said...

What would happen if we siphoned off 20,000 or so new IRS auditors and had them look for election fraud?

Yes, they would still be required to use deadly force, if necessary.

Joe Smith said...

So now liberals will get RDSDS.

Vote on one day. Vote in person. Paper ballots. Have official ID.

If you request absentee with proper ID, we can talk about that...

Static Ping said...

It is the typical incrementalism, except by Republicans for a change. If you want to enforce something (or not enforce something), you focus on the extreme cases that few people will disagree with. "Murderers and rapists shouldn't vote" is not a hard sell. Then once you have the precedent, then you start going after lesser criminals who voted illegally, then people who make outrageous voting crimes, and so forth and so on. By then, the public is accustomed for illegal voting being prosecuted and are not going to get outraged about it if you do not do something really out there.

Or perhaps it is all for show. Perhaps, this was all the illegal voting they could prove so they want to show they did something. At minimum, it dispenses of the media talking point that vote fraud never happens. Not that it will help, given the media is more than willing to lie.

Aggie said...

It's good that this was done, if only to refute the Progressive Leftists who are fond of crying shrilly, 'there is no voter fraud!!'. But these crimes represent a small sector in the overall pie chart. The big pieces are the institutionalized ones - cleaning up voter rolls before each state/federal election, for instance. Policing absentee ballots and strictly abiding by election security measures with high scrutiny.

It's the election security piece that's the biggest slice. Tackle this, and faith-in-elections will return. Make it impossible for a ballot to be separated from its identifying signature and other authenticity measures.

That's the grift, in a nutshell - a play on the principle of the anonymous ballot. Once an anonymous ballot enters the system, it gets counted. It's not just hard to prove that fraud, it's impossible. That's why election fraud on a grand scale is never proven, because the only thing it takes to be successful, is an absence of procedural compliance - postmark dates, signature checks, etc. That's why the opposing election monitors were run out of the room in the key swing districts in 2020.

JAORE said...

How many fraudulent voters are OK? Every single case is a nullification of a legitimate vote.

But the goal posts are moved by critics to say if you cannot say Election X would have been overturned, by a single instance of fake votes, thee is no problem.

Feh!

Bystander said...

Herewith my modest proposal to encourage greater care in voter registration and maintenance of voter lists:

A registered voter has been officially identified as a law-abiding, responsible adult (and citizen). Therefore, presentation of a voter ID card should be sufficient proof that one is allowed to purchase any firearm(s) without any further background check(s).

Incentives matter.

Joe Smith said...

Try them, convict them, and execute them.

Repeat this a few times and voter fraud will greatly diminish.

And I'm not joking...

n.n said...

Democracy is a viable process where there is accountability.

M said...

The process to get your voters rights back in Florida is not confusing at all. I helped a few ex cons that I volunteered with do it. It is very straightforward. If you can read you can do it easily. If you can’t read you shouldn’t be voting.

Jupiter said...

The people who should be going to jail are the ones who let these people vote. If the people (well, Democrats) managing the election system were serious about preventing illegal voting, they would have a list of people who aren't allowed to vote, and they would not let them vote.

FullMoon said...

Credit where credit is due, none of the felons in my neighborhood care about voting.

Jamie said...

If you can’t read you shouldn’t be voting.

Well now, I'm in full agreement that if you've lost your right to vote through commission of a felony, you should have to go through the appropriate process to regain that right. But literacy tests have been held to be unconstitutional. I myself am literate, but I don't know the universe of circumstances that could result in adult illiteracy; I'm not willing to back the quoted statement.

Therefore I believe that offering assistance in going through the legal process to regain the right to vote after serving the required time is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds.

Jamie said...

Therefore I believe that offering assistance in going through the legal process to regain the right to vote after serving the required time is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds.

But - adding onto my thought - I want to thank M for volunteering to do this work!

The Godfather said...

If you deny me the right to vote, or fail to count my vote, you have denied my participation in our democracy. If you allow dead people, or former residents, or fictional people, to vote, or allow someone to vote multiple times, you have denied my participation in our democracy.