GOP idea: A police force to ferret out voter fraud
In the battle over voting rights, an idea is starting to move around in Republican circles: designated police forces designed to hunt down voter fraud. On the basis of available evidence, this is a solution in search of a problem. It is another example of what comes from former president Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron Desantis has put a proposal for such a force in his new budget. In Georgia, former U.S. senator David Perdue, who is running as a Trumpian candidate in the GOP primary for governor against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, says he wants something like it to assure that only legal votes are counted.
Desantis’s new budget calls for $5.7 million for his Office of Election Crimes and Security. The money would pay for 52 staffers, including 20 sworn law enforcement officers and 25 non-sworn investigators, with field offices around the state. The team would go after “election crimes and irregularities” and have the power to refer findings to a statewide prosecutor.
Desantis’s office provided background material that noted that the governor does not have law enforcement responsibilities and that the governor would not direct the team to pursue specific allegations.
“The governor simply wants to ensure that Floridians will have a clear, straightforward way to report suspected voter fraud, and that a dedicated team of law enforcement personnel can address it in accordance with the law,” Christina Pushaw, Desantis’s press secretary, said in an email.
The unit would be housed in the office of the Florida secretary of state, where the incumbent is Laurel M. Lee. The secretary of state in Florida is appointed by the governor, not elected independently.
Proposed legislation says that the unit would field complaints or allegations from government officials or citizens and also have the power to conduct independent investigations. The language also says that to ensure that election officials are complying with the laws, the unit could conduct “proactive information gathering to identify and prevent potential election law violations or irregularities.” In a statement, Mark Ard, the director of external affairs at the Florida Department of State, noted that in addition to individual voter fraud and problems with unsolicited mail-in ballots, the office would deal with many other kinds of violations, from petition-gathering problems to threats of violence against election officials. He added, “We work hard to review all of that now but simply do not have adequate resources or personnel to meet the demand.”
Perdue’s suggestion in Georgia falls short of being a proposal, although it fits with his campaign to undermine the incumbent governor, who drew the wrath of Trump for certifying the election results in 2020.
that gave Biden a winning margin of 11,779 votes. (Trump would later call Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urge him to “find” 11,780 votes to change the outcome. A story that included audio of the call was published by The Washington Post’s Amy Gardner.)
No one would claim there are no mistakes or irregularities in elections, nor that there are not cases of someone deliberately violating election laws. When identified, those cases are prosecuted, sometimes resulting in convictions. Sometimes, too, the fraud is serious enough to affect the outcome of an election. A 2018 congressional election in North Carolina was invalidated and a new election called because of absentee ballot fraud by Republican operatives.