A voting rights group is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) administration for its “byzantine” voter registration process, which has led to the arrests of dozens of formerly incarcerated people who accidentally voted illegally.
Ron DeSantis thinks he is bound for leadership as President of the United States. That’s hilarious!!
As we say in the consulting business:
That’s not a bug.
It’s a feature.
The most aggressive move toward fascism in this country I have ever seen, in terms of raw authoritarianism.
The people he will encounter outside of his fiefdom will give him trouble.
State law does require state election officials to notify counties of ineligible applicants. But Maria Matthews, the director of Florida’s Division of Elections, testified in 2020 that her department had a backlog of 85,000 applications to sift through in order to verify voter eligibility. (A spokesman for Byrd’s office has since told TPM that that figure is out-of-date, but has not provided us with the updated number.)
As a result, 20 Floridians were arrested last August for voting illegally, even though they’d acquired registration cards and thought they were allowed to vote.
“Florida laid a trap for its citizens,” Bowie said.
Almost right.
It wasn’t Florida that laid the trap, but Republicans. This isn’t DeSantis’s most odious action, but its another one that shows he’s not fit to serve at any level of government.
I propose a new rule for Florida: only felons are allowed to vote in Florida. I’m not joking. Okay maybe I am, but this type of stuff makes me really want to lean into the hidden radical inside me. It’s obvious to me that the entire point of legislation preventing convicted criminals from voting is to prevent black people from voting. That’s obvious because 2/3 of the laws are designed with almost intentional precision to target black people. In light of that, it seems, that incarceration should be a prerequisite for participation in democracy, because only those incarcerated have really experienced what the failure of democracy means.
And hopefully they will tar and feather him and run him out on a rail.
As a result, 20 Floridians were arrested last August for voting illegally, even though they’d acquired registration cards and thought they were allowed to vote.
“Florida laid a trap for its citizens,” Bowie said.
IOW it worked exactly as designed.
A voting rights group is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) administration
Activism is good.
Liberal activism is better.
Thank you, Republicans!
My understanding of the mess in Florida with regards to Florida felons regaining their franchise is that the Republican controlled legislature was not happy that ballot initiative 4 was passed by the voters. So the during the next session of the FL lege meeting they added requirements to make it more confusing.
Then Ron decides to spend millions on a voter integrity unit instead of clarifying and cleaning up the mess that FL Republicans intentionally made.
Maybe the rest of the 49 states should declare that FL is incapable of conducting fair and legal elections, and registering of voters, thus they’re put on suspension until such time as they fix the mess that they themselves created. They can send non-voting members to Congress like Puerto Rico, DC, and the Virgin Islands. Which means that Ron and Donald aren’t qualified to run for national public office.
Killing so many birds with one stone sounds grand to me.
More publicity for awfulness.
This helps DeSantis with the dreck that is the primary voters
Now they are felons again! The system works!
We need to constitutional amendment, and more important a country capable of passing a constitutional amendment, that extends the franchise to all residents 18 or over. It should be a requirement that all prisoners receive a ballot, and failure to give them one should be cause for them to have their sentence commuted. All prisoners, with the only exceptions being the constitutional exceptions of those convicted of insurrection or treason.
I wish Merrick Garland and the DOJ would be bringing this law suite. I mean he should be.
I like the idea but would probably not be constitutional.
No, not funny. Terrifying.
Looks like DeSantis and Florida Republicans created the application process as a trap. By design.
Well if you’re going to get technical…