OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Florida Election Crimes Unit is starting to rack up arrests — much to the chagrin of its detractors in the mainstream media. An illegal immigrant from Jamaica was recently arrested for using a fake ID to vote in Florida’s election, despite being a non-citizen and a convicted felon.
“The state Election Crime Unit has arrested a man who investigators say voted in Broward County but is living in the country illegally,” Florida Politics reported.
“Alfred Samuels voted in two Broward Special Elections this year, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE),” the report noted. “He registered to vote there in March 2021 under the alias Alford Nelson using a counterfeit birth certificate from New York City, according to police.”
“Samuels has gone by at least seven different aliases, according to the Department of Corrections, and has previously served prison time in prison for 11 felonies, including cocaine possession, selling/purchasing drugs within 1,000 feet of a school, resisting arrest with violence and trafficking cocaine,” the report added.
“Samuels faces five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for two counts of voting as an unqualified elector,” the report said.
Florida’s Election Crimes Unit (ECU) is coming under increasingly desperate attacks from the mainstream media, who claim that the effort to enforce election integrity is somehow “vote suppression” or has a “racist” component to it.
“Voter intimidation? Black voters over-represented among those arrested so far for election crimes,” the Palm Beach Post blared.
“The vast majority of Florida residents who have been arrested by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit are Black,” the Post noted.
“That 15 of the 19 arrested so far are Black confirms for DeSantis’ political opponents and for voting rights advocates that the new unit is functioning precisely as intended — not as a bulwark against nearly non-existent election fraud but as a means of suppressing and intimidating Black voters who are unlikely to support DeSantis or other Florida Republican Party office-seekers,” the report claimed.
“It was always obvious that this would be used to target and strike fear in Black voters, and this is coming to fruition,” said state Sen. Bobby Powell, a West Palm Beach Democrat.
“DeSantis has weaponized every state agency to do his bidding — watch these videos to see cops have no idea what’s going on as your fellow Floridians are arrested all for a political game,” Rep. Anna Esamani argued. “It’s sick. It’s absolutely sick.”
Eskamani was commenting on a recent case where police arrested felons who were allegedly violating Florida’s election law, but who were purportedly sympathetic to the lawbreakers.
NEW: Police body cameras captured footage of some of @GovRonDeSantis' voter fraud arrests.
Those arrested were confused. The local officers arresting them were almost apologetic:
"I’ve never seen these charges before in my entire life."https://t.co/fVQNJbigwT
— Lawrence Mower (@lmower3) October 18, 2022
When informed that they were breaking the law, however, it was confirmed that they were felons, and thus they did not have the right to vote in the state’s elections.
“Many of the individuals recently charged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new election crimes unit told investigators they had no idea that with their felony convictions, they were unable to vote when they cast ballots in the 2020 election.”
Thus, the ECU is functioning exactly as Governor Ron DeSantis intended and exactly how an executive enforcing the laws of the state should act.
In August, DeSantis explained why he founded the unit.
“The purpose of that was to investigate things like voter fraud and other violations of election law,” he said. “What ends up happening is you will see some examples — and granted, in 2020 in Florida, not on a grand scale — but you would see examples, and nothing would get prosecuted. Nothing would end up happening. Well, that’s just going to beget more of it.”
After the ECU made its first arrests, the Florida governor promised more would be forthcoming.
“This is just the opening salvo,” DeSantis said. “This is not the sum total of 2020.”
DeSantis clearly was not done. But the Democratic Party’s outrage over a handful of arrests suggests that the governor is just reaching the tip of the iceberg.
