His talk of ‘election integrity’ belies dismal DeSantis record

FORT LAUDERDALE — The Ron DeSantis rhetoric doesn’t match the record — as usual. So let’s set the record straight.

The governor’s campaign of distortion and disinformation returned to West Palm Beach this week for a road show that was a textbook example of false advertising. He called a “press conference,” then staged a partisan rally and refused to take questions.

Standing behind an “election integrity” sign, he egged on cheering right-wing partisans to jeer the anti-Biden slur “Let’s Go Brandon” by referring to “the Brandon administration.” This from the sitting governor of the third-largest state.

He claimed he signed an election “reform” bill (SB 90) that — in his words — “stopped unsolicited mass mail balloting” in Florida, when it was never allowed in the first place. Empty, phony rhetoric. By law, every voter must request a mail ballot, and DeSantis and lawmakers needlessly made that more difficult.

He boasted of banning “Zuckerbucks,” or grants by private outside groups, such as one by Facebook’s founder, to supplement underfunded county election operations. But he never said that one of the largest recipients of outside money was DeSantis’ own Department of State, which received $553,000 from the Center for Election Innovation and Research (half the money was returned unspent). It’s a respected group, but it’s outside money. (The agency confirmed the grant).

CEIR’s founders include a widely respected voting expert, David Becker. But DeSantis supporters won’t like knowing that Becker has been a forceful critic of the grave threat to democracy posed by the Arizona “audit” triggered by Trump’s claims of election fraud. That wasn’t the worst of it.

DeSantis denigrated Florida’s election supervisors, the true line of defense against fraud, who have faced stubborn resistance from DeSantis and Republicans in the Legislature when they try to bring real integrity to Florida’s elections, not just partisan rhetoric.

The governor’s reckless rhetoric and the claims of election fraud strike genuine fear into election administrators, and it comes days after they issued a strong statement that “public trust in our elections is being systematically undermined, to the detriment of all Americans.”

DeSantis made claims of noncitizens voting in Florida but offered no proof and accused supervisors of condoning it, another falsehood.

“You have voter rolls that are supposed to be clean, but not every county does the voter rolls,” DeSantis said.

To curb voter fraud, he said he’ll ask lawmakers to require supervisors to clean the voter rolls by specific dates. All 67 counties recently filed six-month voter roll maintenance reports in which they must list how many noncitizens, dead people and other ineligible voters have been removed from the rolls between Jan. 1 and June 30.

The reports are required by state law. Does DeSantis even know this?

It gets worse. You never see a state trooper on I-95, but under DeSantis there will be “election cops” on the prowl. He’ll ask the Legislature to create a new office to investigate election crimes in what looks suspiciously like a compromise to the zealots who demand an Arizona-style audit of a Florida election that Trump won fair and square.

Like Trump, DeSantis employs half-truths and innuendo to sow doubts about the reliability of elections. He spoke vaguely that “someone told me” his father got a ballot three years after he died.

Oh really? It’s the responsibility of DeSantis’ Department of State to notify any county that a voter has died after a death certificate is recorded with the state.

But it’s easier to demonize county election supervisors, who pleaded with the state for years to join a national clearinghouse known as “ERIC” (the Electronic Registration Information Center) to find and remove duplicate registrations of people eligible to vote in Florida and another state.

That’s a very real potential source of voter fraud, and DeSantis finally agreed to join ERIC. But it took far too long.

If there’s real election fraud in Florida, why haven’t we heard a peep about it from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, whose director reports to DeSantis and the Cabinet? Believe me, if FDLE agents broke a big election fraud case, we’d all be hearing about it.

But wait — it gets worse. Nearly two years after DeSantis signed a law that professionalized election audits and recounts, a worthwhile step to improve public confidence in results, his Department of State has still not adopted administrative rules so the advanced technology known as “Clear Ballot” can be used statewide. Laws require implementing rules, but as a supervisor told me: “Nobody knows why this recount rule hasn’t moved.”

The election supervisors are still waiting, but all they get is rhetoric.