Several Floridians facing criminal voter fraud charges, loudly trumpeted by Governor Ron DeSantis last week, believed they were eligible to vote, and in some cases said they were advised by government officials that they could cast ballots.
Court and election documents reviewed by the Guardian raise questions about whether the 19 people charged last week knowingly committed fraud or whether they were confused about their eligibility. All those charged have prior murder or sexual offense convictions, which means they cannot vote in Florida unless they receive clemency. All of the defendants also submitted voter registration applications, which were approved by local election officials, ahead of the 2020 election, and several said they had received voter registration cards in the mail, which they took as a signal that they were eligible to vote.
The defendants are all charged with at least one count of false swearing on a voter registration application and voting as an unqualified elector, both third-degree felonies punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. In order to get a conviction, prosecutors will have to prove the defendants knew they were ineligible when they registered and voted. They have yet to submit any evidence showing the defendants were explicitly warned their specific felonies barred them from voting.
DeSantis announced the charges last week to signal the aggressiveness with which a newly created office in Florida – the first of its kind in the country – will investigate and prosecute election fraud. The defendants, DeSantis said, would “pay the price”.
Nearly all those who were charged registered to vote after 2018, when Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that lifted Florida’s lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions. But the measure, called Amendment 4, left those convicted of murder or sexual crimes permanently disenfranchised, and after the amendment went into effect, Florida lawmakers passed a law that made it extremely difficult for people with felony convictions to figure out if they were eligible to vote.
Affidavits filed by investigators with the Florida department of law enforcement last week offered little evidence that the people charged knew they were not protected by Amendment 4 and ineligible to vote.
One of the voters charged, Douglas Oliver, a 59-year-old Black man in Tampa, was convicted of a sex crime in 2001, which made him ineligible to vote in Florida. He told the Guardian that he had not thought about voting until a canvasser approached him one day at a store and encouraged him to register in 2020. Oliver said he disclosed his felony conviction, and the canvasser said he was eligible. After submitting a registration application, he got a registration card from his local election office in Hillsborough county.
Just before the election, Oliver and his wife, Versie, said, they had also called the local election office to confirm that he could cast a ballot. Oliver said he had disclosed that he had been convicted of a disqualifying sexual offense, but he said officials had told him he was eligible, the couple said. He voted in the 2020 election.
“I abide with everything they tell me to do dealing with my felony charges,” he said. “I wouldn’t have voted. If they said, ‘No, you can’t vote,’ I would have said ‘OK.’”
Gerri Kramer, a spokesperson for the supervisor of elections office in Hillsborough county, pointed to an online FAQ about Amendment 4, which she said the office used to respond to inquiries about voting eligibility. She also noted that under Florida law, the secretary of state’s office was charged with reviewing voter eligibility and flagging ineligible voters, such as those with disqualifying felony convictions, for removal from the rolls.
The state first notified the local elections office of Oliver’s ineligibility on 2 February 2022, Kramer said. He was removed from the rolls in April of this year.
Oliver was handcuffed and arrested while taking out his trash one morning last week. He posted bail – set at $1,000 – but now faces two new third-degree felony charges. The bail money was a stretch for Oliver, who is retired and lives on a fixed income. He said he was looking for an attorney to help represent him.
“This is all performance art by the governor,” said Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has studied felon voting rights in Florida. “He’s decided to continue to prey on the most vulnerable individuals in Florida. It’s par for the course.”
David Christopher Dana, one of the men charged, in Fort Lauderdale, told investigators he had filled out a voter registration form to see if his voting rights had been restored and voted after receiving his voter registration card in the mail. Another man in Palm Beach county told officials he had gone to a voter registration drive in 2019 after learning felons could have their voting rights restored. Another person asked him questions and filled out his voter registration form, which he signed but didn’t read closely. He later told investigators he thought his voting rights had been restored. Another man, in Delray Beach, told an investigator he might have been confused when he checked the box saying he was eligible.
Eugene Suggs Jr, 65, told investigators he thought he was eligible to vote because he had been granted clemency in 1987. An investigator told him that a second-degree murder conviction in 1990 had caused him to lose his voting rights again. Another defendant, Leo Grant Jr, also received clemency in 1987 but lost his right to vote in 1999 when he was convicted of second-degree lewd assault. During a voluntary interview outside a gas station, he told officers he had received something in the mail telling him he was eligible to vote. He told the Miami Herald he was confused as to how he had committed fraud because he had not been not asked about his prior conviction, a sexual offense, when he registered.
Two men in Miami-Dade county, both of whom have prior second-degree murder convictions, separately told investigators they had registered to vote after being approached by a voter advocate and that they had signed their voter registration applications, but had not filled them out.
“Generally, I think people do see registering to vote as basically asking for a determination on their eligibility. That’s just how people perceive voter registration. They assume that if they’re not eligible, they’re going to be told so,” said Blair Bowie, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, who specializes in voting rights for people with felony convictions.
Jerry Lee Foster, a 72-year-old convicted sex offender in Orlando, told investigators he had heard on the news in 2020 that DeSantis had “blessed” people with felony convictions with the ability to vote. He said he called up a sheriff’s deputy charged with monitoring him as a sex offender and asked if he was eligible to vote and was told that he was. He then registered to vote. The affidavit filed in court does not say whether the Florida department of law enforcement investigated whether Foster was advised he was eligible to vote.
Foster did not respond to an emailed interview request. The Orange county sheriff’s office declined to comment on his case specifically.
“The deputies on the Sexual Offender Squad are well aware that if someone is convicted of a felony sex offense, they are not eligible to vote in Florida,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our deputies do not offer legal advice. In fact, they are clear with offenders that in all matters, it is incumbent upon them (the offender) to make sure that their actions are lawful.”
Several of the voters charged weren’t notified of their ineligibility until this year. It’s not clear why the Florida secretary of state’s office, charged with reviewing voting eligibility, failed to quickly flag and remove the voters with disqualifying felony convictions from the rolls before the 2020 election.
The delayed notification illustrates the byzantine bureaucracy Florida Republicans created in 2019 when they passed legislation to implement Amendment 4. In addition to laying out the murder and sexual crimes that would cause someone to permanently lose their voting rights, the measure, SB 7066, required people to repay outstanding fines and fees they owed before they could vote again. Extensive litigation over the measure ultimately exposed that Florida officials had no way of easily checking new registrants’ eligibility and that there was no way for anyone uncertain of their status to figure out how much money they owed or if they were eligible.
“These are the folks who are the easiest to identify as having their rights taken away so they cannot register to vote,” Smith, the University of Florida professor, said, referring to people convicted of murder and sex crimes. “The division of elections failed its duty not to register these people in the first place.
“The system wasn’t designed for this purpose, neither for the state nor for an individual,” Smith added. “In my opinion, it’s not on the individual [to verify eligibility], it’s on the state.”
A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
Investigators noted in their affidavits of probable cause that the defendants had signed their voter registration applications, which requires voters to swear under criminal penalty that they are eligible to vote.
The voter registration application asks people to check a box saying: “I affirm that I am not a convicted felon, or if I am, my right to vote has been restored,” which those charged did. The form does not have any written warning or explanation that people convicted of murder and sexual offenses cannot vote.
The fact that people signed a voter registration form doesn’t prove they knew they were ineligible to vote, Bowie said.
“When you’re talking about the intent piece, it either says nothing about their intent, or it says they did think they were eligible. They signed under oath that they thought they were eligible,” she said.
Stanford Blake, a retired judge from Miami, said he thought prosecutors would have a hard time proving their case absent more information the defendants knew they were ineligible to vote. He said the affidavits of probable cause, filed in Florida courts this week, probably included “most of the evidence in this kind of case”.
“Listen, if someone said during the interview, ‘Yes, I knew I really wasn’t eligible but I wanted to try it anyway,’ they have a good case. Someone says, ‘I went to a voter registration drive and they helped me fill out the forms,’ they’re going to have a harder time on that one.”
Blake said he was curious to see if prosecutors would be able to get a single conviction; the charges were “pure politics”, he said, by the governor to justify the state’s new office of election crimes and security.
A spokesperson for the Florida department of law enforcement declined to comment on whether additional evidence showing intent was forthcoming, citing ongoing prosecutions.
Oliver, the Tampa man facing charges, said he was initially thrilled when he believed he was eligible to vote.
“It’s sad to say, I was very happy about it, and it ended up being a really sad situation,” he said. Oliver, who said he has glaucoma and diabetes, said he thought he would die if he went to prison again. “I wouldn’t survive,” he said.