Editorial: DeSantis proposes to waste $5.7 million chasing election fraud ghosts

As Donald Trump, that sorest of sore losers, was demonizing thousands of dedicated poll workers and election officials in the states he lost, Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly assured Floridians that nothing went amiss here. The votes were counted swiftly, audited routinely, and certified without complaint.

Trump himself praised Florida, a state he won.

And yet DeSantis then got the Legislature to pass a series of mean-spirited voter suppression measures to handicap mail voting and, like Georgia, even prohibit giving free water to people waiting in lines.

Now, in his proposed budget, DeSantis wants $5.7 million to hire a squad of special police, assigned to the secretary of state, who would scour the state for election violations.

Considering his feverish partisanship, it is fair to worry that they might also be used to intimidate prospective voters. Politicians have been known to do that.

Several larger questions come to mind.

Is it wise to give DeSantis that much more police power? He appoints the secretary of state.

Shouldn’t the oversight of elections be removed from his direct control and assigned to a bipartisan board, as in some other states?

Why does a state that ran such a clean, orderly election need to spend so much money chasing largely phantom offenses?

Since precious little election fraud has been alleged here, the size of that budget request appears far out of proportion.

But speaking of fraud in Florida, news broke this week that three residents of The Villages have been charged with illegally voting more than once, both in Florida and out of state. Two are registered Republicans and the third, an independent, was a known supporter of Trump.

To say that’s ironic is an understatement. The Villages, that massive retirement community in north-central Florida, is a favorite venue for Republican politicians. Rick Scott, the former governor, went there to sign a state budget. Trump held a pre-election rally there.

But it didn’t take $5.7 million worth of specialized law enforcement to bring those charges. It was the Sumter County supervisor of elections, Bill Keen, who referred them to the state attorney. Keen found out after an email was forwarded to him by the state Division of Elections. That email came from an anonymous author who had compared the voter rolls of states where these are easily and cheaply obtained, according to Orlando’s WKMG Channel 6. With Florida’s broad public records law, our state is certainly one of these.

It is not illegal to be registered in more than one place, which can easily happen inadvertently. It is a third-degree felony to vote more than once in the same election.

Coincidentally, the Associated Press reported this week that it had found no more than 475 cases of vote fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast in the six states Trump has disputed.

The AP contacted more than 300 local election offices in its months-long investigation.

“Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots,” the AP said. They included a Wisconsin man who thought he could vote while on parole and an Arizona woman suspected of voting for her dead mother.

Election fraud is not exactly a career choice for thoughtful criminals. There are multiple safeguards as to how ballots are stored and issued. No one votes without signing his or her name at least once — twice, normally, if it’s by mail ballot. Ballots are counted by machines never connected to the internet. They’re audited randomly to ensure that what was reported was accurate.

That’s not to say cheating is impossible. But the odds are impossibly long against enough people doing it in concert to alter elections. What the AP found in those six states were isolated incidents, far too few of them to vindicate Trump’s false claims.

In Florida, the greater danger is illustrated by the ancient legal principle that no one should be a judge in his or her own case. Nor should that person pick the judge, either.

Florida’s 2000 election, which gave George W. Bush the presidency, was suspect in many eyes not simply for being incredibly close, but also because it was overseen by an elected secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who was a co-chair of Bush’s Florida campaign.

It is traditional but not universal for elected secretaries of state to oversee elections in the United States. Florida is one of only five where the chief election official is directly appointed by the governor. That came about under a constitutional amendment that converted the office of secretary of state into an appointed position. Under Rick Scott, DeSantis’ predecessor, the office engaged in some outrageously inaccurate voter purging.

Given how smoothly Florida’s last election went, DeSantis had to reach for reasons to justify his election police proposal. He says it’s all about giving voters confidence in the process.

What that really means is that it’s another play for Trump’s voters by a man who hopes to be president himself.

Before Trump, nobody had any serious doubts about the integrity of American elections, and not even Trump has questioned Florida’s. The only need to boost confidence comes from the false claims levied by Trump and his sycophants.

If our governor were truly interested in boosting confidence in our elections instead of playing to the electoral bugaboo of Trump’s imaginings, he would support establishment of an independent, bipartisan board of elections with members serving fixed terms, removable only for cause.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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