Ron DeSantis' Election Fraud Arrests Are Already Unraveling

Florida governor Ron DeSantis recently held a major press conference in a heavily Democratic area of the state to announce the arrests of 20 individuals by his new election fraud police. But it turns out that few, if any, of these cases are actually prosecutable because of the way that the Florida voter fraud law is written. So this big spectacle is already falling apart, and DeSantis looks even dumber than usual. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So recently, Florida governor Ron DeSantis made a big flashy press conference where appearing in a heavily Democratic county he announced that his state election police force that he created so that he could control them, had arrested 20 individuals for illegally voting in the most recent election, 20 people. And he's only had this police force for a couple of weeks and wow, we have arrested 20 people. This big press conference, again held of course in the Democratic controlled county to send a warning shot to Democrats that he's not playing around, and almost as quickly as those arrests were announced, it's been revealed that pretty much all of them are going to end up getting acquitted because here's what happened. These 20 individuals who registered to vote were not eligible to vote. I'll concede that point. They were former felons who had been arrested for either murder or sexual offenses.

And those were the two caveats to Florida's recently passed former felons are allowed to register to vote again legislation, actually it was amendment not legislation. So if you killed somebody or if you're guilty of a sexual offense, you did not get your right to vote back. But these 20 individuals didn't know that. So they go and they register to vote. And at that point, it goes to the state. So it's on the state, not the individual to catch these, flag them and say, no, we are denying your ballot application, but that didn't happen. Ron DeSantis' own state government, the people he appointed approved the voter registration for these 20 individuals. And the law is written as such for his little election gustapo or as Marjorie Taylor Greene would say gazpacho, you have to knowingly, knowingly commit voter fraud, knowingly vote when you're not legally allowed to. So because that word knowingly is in there all 20 of these people, according to legal experts, are probably going to be acquitted.

So that big grand press conference where he says we got 'em ladies and gentlemen, all of 'em are gonna be acquitted because it was Ron DeSantis' own government that screwed up. And Ron DeSantis clearly now knows that because he came out a couple days ago and said, oh no, no, no, no. This is the fault of those local election officials. They're the bad guys here. We'll see what we can do about that. Wrong again, bucko. Here it is, this is from Slate explaining how the process of registration votes works in the state of Florida. When the county's supervisor of elections receives a registration application, they forward it to the state. The division of elections, part of the department of state, then determines whether the applicant is quote, potentially ineligible based on a felony conviction without civil rights restored. If the agency finds evidence of ineligibility, it informs the county supervisor who then tells the applicant why his or her registration was denied. If the applicant confirms the allegation, he's removed from the voter registration system.

If the applicant denies the allegations, he can demand a hearing to prove that he or she is eligible. And that is actually mandated by state law here in the state of Florida signed in 2008, when we had a Republican governor, Charlie Crist, actually that may have been Rick Scott at that point. No, I think it was Charlie Crist. Either way, nothing but Republicans here, they're all the same. They're interchangeable. But either way, there you go, Ron. Your people screwed this up.