MIAMI — Accusations of a “stolen” election and mistrust in the voting process are still spreading in traditional battleground states, where former President Donald Trump looms large despite not being on the ballot.
Republicans are joining forces with members of the extreme-right conservative group, the Proud Boys, on the campaign trail and as poll workers in Florida and its most populous county, Miami-Dade.
And ex-felons whose voting rights were restored thanks to a state referendum still worry about retaliation from a Florida election crimes office, which was created by Gov. Ron DeSantis. State police arrested 20 mostly Black defendants on voter fraud charges this summer even though election officials registered them to vote.
Fears of voter suppression are rising before Tuesday’s midterm election in Florida — though evidence of intimidation here has yet to reach the level of states like Arizona, where in October two armed “vigilantes” dressed in tactical gear were watching over a drop box for mail-in ballots in Maricopa County. That county, the fourth most populous in the nation with 4.5 million people, includes the city of Phoenix.
“I think there is a mood out there that has gotten worse in many circles since the 2020 election, and it is of grave concern,” said lawyer J.C. Planas, a former Republican state legislator in Miami-Dade who switched parties and became a poll watcher for Joe Biden’s Democratic team two years ago.
“It may be worse in other states than in Florida, but I don’t discount that it could happen here,” said Planas, who is working as a poll watcher for Florida Democratic candidates, such as Charlie Crist and Val Demings. “The fact that we have Proud Boys who have signed up to be poll workers for Election Day is incredible.”
Proud Boys at the polls
Two former members of the Proud Boys — the white nationalist group that has become influential in Miami-Dade’s Republican Party — have qualified to serve as poll workers in the county and will be interacting with voters on Election Day.
A third former member, who actually wears an ankle monitor following an indictment for his part in the Jan. 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol, also continues to appear on the county’s poll worker database. But the county said Monday he was removed from the Election Day work schedule three weeks ago after Elections Supervisor Christina White learned he had been charged with several felonies.
Elections officials in Broward and Miami-Dade counties said that since early voting started on Oct. 24, there have been no incidents of voter intimidation at the polls or drop-off ballot sites.
“The Miami-Dade County Elections Department does not have any reports of threats or harassment this election cycle,” White, the elections supervisor, told the Miami Herald.
“The department has a long-standing partnership with the Miami-Dade County Police Department, which has early voting and Election Day locations on their patrol routes to ensure public safety,” she said. “Additionally, we have protocols in place for immediate response should there be any disturbances which require law enforcement.”
Ivan Castro, a spokesman for the Broward Elections Department, echoed that point. “This is an issue in other states, not here,” he said.
Prosecutors follow complaints
Meanwhile, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami have established their customary election teams to handle any complaints about threatening violence, intimidation, or buying and selling votes.
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said that so far her office’s voter fraud task force has received fewer complaints than in years past, despite the national scrutiny on reports of voter intimidation and allegations of fraud in other states such as Arizona, Colorado and Georgia.
“I would say it’s been less active,” Fernandez Rundle said in an interview.
The state attorney’s task force is different than the one created by DeSantis in the wake of recent Republican-led efforts to crack down on supposed widespread voter fraud falsely alleged by Trump. Fernandez Rundle’s task force was created more than a decade ago, as investigators probed, and in some cases made arrests, in high-profile allegations of voter fraud involving the collection of absentee ballots.
This year, however, calls regarding potential abuse of absentee ballots and problems at early voting sites have been minimal — just seven as of Monday. The complaints have been garden variety: one caller complained that a clerk at a drop box site was observed giving a voter candidate information, or that campaigners were closer to polls than the 150 feet that is allowed. One person called the task force hotline number asking where they could cast their vote.
“I’m happily surprised, it’s calmer than what I’ve been seeing nationally,” Fernandez Rundle said. “I’d like to think it’s a result of years of being out there, being accessible, building up trust with the Department of Elections.”
Still, the hotline is expected to be busy on Election Day, as state attorney’s plainclothes investigators — assigned to certain quadrants of the county — respond quickly to complaints called in from precincts. “A real flurry comes in on Election Day,” she said.
Federal prosecutors in South Florida have reported no complaints of intimidation or harassment in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm. But in an isolated case during early primary voting in August, a man at a polling station in Broward County threatened election workers who assisted him and other voters, according to an indictment.
While voting at a senior center in Sunrise on Aug. 17, Joshua David Lubitz said, “Should I kill them one by one or should I blow the place up?” and then he “pointed his finger and thumb in a gun-like fashion towards election workers,” a federal indictment says.
Lubitz, 38, was charged with voter intimidation, released on a bond and pleaded not guilty in October.
Combating myths
County supervisors of elections told the News Service of Florida that they are combating myths about election fraud from an increasingly wary public.
While Florida has broad open-records laws, much of the information being sought, including from people and groups outside of the state, is shielded from release to the public.
“They’re demanding, essentially, the equivalent of the architect of a nuclear plant and the usernames and passwords of all the security surrounding it,” Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley told the News Service. “They want the names that are allowed to log in. They want copies of all the voting system hard drives. … It’s a road map for hacking. That stuff is protected at the state and federal level.”
Earley, who is president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association, and his colleagues said they believe the public-records requests could be an attempt to set the stage for post-election legal challenges.
Restoring voting rights
Amid much fanfare in Democratic-rich Broward County, DeSantis announced in August that state police arrested 20 people on voter fraud charges, saying they had been convicted of murder or felony sex offenses and were ineligible for voter restoration. Yet the mostly Black defendants and their lawyers argued that no one stopped them from registering to vote.
Rather, they were issued voter registration cards by the state and used them — only to be charged with election crimes.
That sent a chill across the state, scaring off some potential voters who may be qualified to vote but won’t for fear of retaliation.
“I have not encountered in the past this many voters calling, concerned that they may be prosecuted or what-have-you for voter fraud,” Earley told the News Service. “And these are all eligible voters that have contacted me.”
Neil Volz, deputy director at the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a group dedicated to helping formerly incarcerated people vote again after the passage of state referendum in 2018, said he has experienced the same disturbing trend.
Volz said his group is hearing from ex-felons all over the state regarding confusion over whether they can vote after paying off any outstanding fines stemming from their original sentences or whether they could face charges from the governor’s election crimes office if they exercise their right to vote.
Volz told the Miami Herald that it is “terrible” to think that the “de facto decision for many is not to vote” because of the uncertainty and fear.
“The decision to criminalize voting (by Gov. DeSantis) amplified the anxiety of voting across the state,” he added.
FBI focus on threats
Despite the heightened sense of concern over the vote in Florida, the Sunshine State is not among the seven states that continue to see unusual levels of threats to election workers, FBI officials said last month.
Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin — all states where the 2020 election results were questioned, officials noted. President Biden won each of those states. FBI officials are discussing how to deal with these threats.
Since June 2021, the FBI has received more than 1,000 tips concerning threats to election workers, according to the agency. Roughly 11% of those tips have led to FBI investigations.
In response to this and other disturbing trends, the U.S. Conference of Mayors last month held a virtual seminar, “Discussion on Protecting Safe, Fair and Free Elections,” focusing on a variety of potential threats.
“As Americans prepare to cast ballots, there is significant concern that [the] midterm elections face a wide range of security threats, including foreign cyber interference, disinformation campaigns and voter intimidation,” the group warned.
“Nov. 8 is not a national presidential election, so the damage will probably be targeted locally.”
———
