‘Dangerous’: Civil rights groups warn Florida’s ‘election police’ could be used to intimidate voters

Florida’s state legislature has approved the creation of a new office dedicated to the investigation of election-related crimes, among the latest state-level Republican efforts targeting voting rights and election administration.

Voting rights and civil groups warn that such legislation – which has also been proposed by GOP officials in Arizona and Georgia – could end up criminalising a bedrock of democracy and be used to intimidate voters from casting their ballots.

Florida’s Senate Bill 254 – prompted by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign the bill into law – approves $2.5m for an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Department of State, the first such office in the nation. The office – which answers to the governor – will be staffed by 25 people to run a voter fraud hotline and investigate reports of possible fraud and other election-related violations

Kirk Bailey, political director for the ACLU of Florida, said that “there is absolutely no reason for an elections’ police force”.

The bill “would create an elections police force that can only be described as a solution in search of a problem,” he said in a statement. “The handful of cases of intentional misconduct that have been prosecuted in the past year demonstrates that the existing system works. There are no guardrails in this legislation to prevent the proposed office from becoming politicized. We have real needs in Florida to address, and this is not one of them.”

Genesis Robinson, political director of Black-led nonpartisan rights group Equal Ground Action Fund, echoed those criticisms in remarks to Congress, calling the bill “a ridiculous solution to a problem that does not exist.”

The bill is “nothing more than a tool to further insulate Republican political power at the expense of Floridian’s voting rights,” he said in a statement to The Independent.

“We already have safeguards in place to investigate and prosecute those who violate our election laws, and in a state that prides itself on fiscal responsibility, this new elections police force is a waste of tax dollars,” he said. “Our political atmosphere has become so polarized and divisive, and we at Equal Ground have genuine concerns that this new agency will be weaponized to attack political enemies and divert attention and resources from the real work of making voting more accessible to those who desire to participate in the democratic process.”

The legislation also requires election officials to perform annual maintenance of voter rolls, rather than biennial reviews, which could purge thousands of registered voters from the rolls.

It also increases criminal penalties for returning ballots that aren’t cast by a family member – what GOP critics call “ballot harvesting” but is often used by community organisations, churches and other voter campaigns relying on volunteers to help gather ballots for older and disabled people, among others who need assistance casting their ballots. Under the new legislation, doing so is punishable with a fine of up to $50,000 and five years in prison.

The bill also bans ranked-choice voting and puts new restrictions on third-party voter registration efforts.

Legislation “creates new, expensive, unnecessary, and deliberate barriers to voting,” according to Florida’s League of Women Voters.

“During the 2020 presidential election, Governor Ron DeSantis touted Florida’s election process as the ‘gold’ standard nationwide,” the group said in a statement. “While we can all agree that election security is of the utmost importance, these additional confusing and unnecessary steps will deter voters from participating in the democratic process. We must do everything in our power to protect our freedom to vote in safe and secure elections.”

Bipartisan efforts to protect and expand voting rights in 2020 saw few issues in that year’s elections, but a baseless narrative promoted by Donald Trump and his allies alleging mass voter fraud and “stolen” results has fuelled a wave of GOP-sponsored legislation in most state legislatures to roll back voting access and hand election oversight to Republican legislators.

Florida’s Department of State received 262 election-fraud complaints 2020 and referred 75 to law enforcement, while more than 11 million Florida voters participated in that year’s presidential election.

“Election fraud is very rarely an issue, so why dedicate millions of dollars and a police force to it? Dangerous,” said Bernice King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Last year, States United Democracy Centre identified 262 bills in 41 states that would interfere with election administration, and at least 32 of those proposals become law across 17 states by the end of 2021.

In 2022, state legis­lat­ors in at least 27 states have intro­duced, pre-filed or carried over at least 250 bills with restrict­ive provi­sions on voting rights, compared to 75 such bills in 24 states by the same time last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.