Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who wants to be president, is a stuntman.
He used taxpayer money to round up 48 Venezuelan asylum-seekers in the country legally and ship them from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. That stunt won points with immigration-obsessed Republican voters.
He created a special state police unit to hunt for witches snipes voting fraud. That stunt won points with Republican election-deniers.
With much fanfare, DeSantis announced at a press conference the task force arrested 20 people for illegally voting in the 2020 election (see story here). All were ex-felons advocates say were confused by a new Florida law that restores voting rights to ex-felons, but excludes those convicted of certain crimes (see story here), and the arrests appeared to target Democratic counties and black voters.
Most wondered why they were being arrested, and even the arresting cops seemed confused (see story here and video below).
Then on Friday, October 21, 2022, a judge dismissed the charges against Robert Lee Wood (photo above), the first of the 20 to appear in court (read story here). As of Friday, December 9, 2022, judges had dismissed two more cases (see update here). Probably all of them will be, because the state is guiltier than they are.
Restoring voting rights to ex-felons is controversial, despite being widely supported by felon rehabilitation experts. Whatever one’s views on the issue, the fact remains that Florida’s legislature joined the many states that are restoring voting rights to ex-prisoners upon completion of their sentences as part of an effort to reintegrate them back into society. And being confused by confusing laws isn’t a good reason to put anyone in jail.
Especially disturbing is Republican voting vigilantes’ targeting of black people. This blog has documented multiple instances of Trump supporters who got probation, fines, and community service for knowingly and deliberately committing voting fraud. But a Texas court sentenced Crystal Mason, a black woman who was told by a poll worker she could cast a provisional ballot, to five years in prison and that vote wasn’t even counted.
This isn’t the first time DeSantis has sicced police on citizens for personal political gain. In December 2020, he “swatted” a whistleblower who accused him of tampering with Covid-19 data (see article here); Florida eventually had one of the nation’s highest Covid-19 death rates, as I noted yesterday in my posting here.
Few things are more dangerous than a politician who misuses police powers to harass and persecute innocent citizens for purely political reasons. Imagine what DeSantis might do if he were elected president and the vast powers of the federal government were in his grasp.