Felons suspected of illegally voting in GOP county not arrested in DeSantis double standard: report

Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced to the nation that he had arrested several people who illegally voted in defiance of re-enfranchisement laws — though the cases mainly fell apart before being dismissed.

Now, similar cases have cropped up in a heavily-Republican county — and they're not getting prosecuted, according to The Daily Beast.

"The office of State Attorney Bill Gladson confirmed in a May 2022 letter obtained by the Orlando Sentinel that the six offenders voted in Lake County — but that they couldn’t be prosecuted because their fraud wasn’t willful after they were 'mistakenly given voter registration cards,'" said the report.

"The decision not to prosecute the men came mere months before 20 ex-felons living in majority Democrat counties were quickly jailed after being arrested by DeSantis’ new election police force, the Office of Election Crimes and Security. Each of the 20 had also voted, but they too had received voter ID cards."

“The people are similarly situated, and there is no factual way to differentiate between the cases and yet some people are being prosecuted under the same factual scenario and others are not,” said Roger Weeden, an attorney who represented two of the people arrested by DeSantis' election investigators.

Until a few years ago, Florida permanently disqualified all convicted felons from voting, with only a select few having their rights restored case-by-case at the discretion of the governor — a system that dates back to the Jim Crow era as way for lawmakers to selectively strip political power from Black residents, who were far more frequently targeted for felony charges. Amendment 4, a constitutional change approved by voters in 2018, restored voting rights to those who complete their sentences, but excludes those convicted of murder and sexual offenses.

The GOP-controlled legislature subsequently rolled back Amendment 4 even further by declaring rehabilitated ex-offenders must also settle all outstanding fines and fees to regain their voting rights, even those that weren't part of the original sentence.