Florida’s Republican Governor Proposes An Election Police Force

While the Biden Administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress dilly-dally about protecting Black Americans’ voting rights, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has proposed $6 million in taxpayer dollars to create a 52-person special police force department to patrol voting.

The new force would be the first of its kind in the nation and has fascist overtones. It’s primary purpose would be to ““investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation,” of voting rules, including Florida’s restrictive new election law, which was written and passed based largely on lies about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to the Washington Post.

The hypocrisy, and the intent, are transparent. DeSantis himself had gone as far as to praise Florida’s elections after Donald Trump, a Republican like DeSantis, was declared the winner of the state’s popular vote and thus all 29 of the state’s electoral votes. But, as the Post reported, when it looked like Trump was in trouble elsewhere, DeSantis changed his tune.

From the Washington Post

“The way Florida did it, I think, inspired confidence,” DeSantis said on Nov. 4, 2020, hours after the results showed that President Donald Trump had won the state by more than three percentage points. “I think that’s how elections should be run.

But in the wake of Trump’s ultimate defeat, as he and his supporters spread falsehoods about election fraud nationwide and demanded audits in numerous states, many Republicans in Florida pressed DeSantis to do the same.

Though he resisted an audit, DeSantis signed a controversial bill last year curtailing some voting options that had helped to expand participation. The law — which is being challenged in court, with a trial set to begin Jan. 30 — limits the use of ballot drop boxes, adds requirements to request mail ballots, and bans groups or individuals from gathering absentee ballots on other voters’ behalf.

No legislators have signed on to sponsor DeSantis’s new proposal. House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R) said DeSantis is concerned that existing law enforcement agencies don’t have the expertise necessary to find and prosecute election crimes. Yet he hasn’t embraced the governor’s approach. “We’re going to look at it, we’ll evaluate it and see what happens,” Sprowls said last week.

The proposal would require passage by Florida’s legislature, which has a Republican majority and is where the voting law the election police would be charged with enforcing, was written. And what are Democrats doing while Florida’s governor tries to publicly fund a new election police force? Their efforts to pass new federal laws protecting voting rights have gotten so cartoonish that sports figures like legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban, former NBA Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and living NBA logo Jerry West are now writing letters to push human civil rights roadblock West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, to like, actually do something.