What we learned from our Florida voting rights investigation

Since taking office in 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republicans who control the Florida legislature have led one of the most aggressive efforts to restrict voting – particularly in Black communities – in the United States.

It’s an attack that has unfolded on many fronts. The state has prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote. DeSantis’s administration has levied significant fines against voter registration groups, in some cases for minor errors. Republicans have rewritten Florida’s election laws to create new voting barriers, weakened Black political power in the state, and used a new state agency to intimidate voters.

The Guardian has been investigating Ron DeSantis’s attack on voting rights. Here are a few of the most consequential actions DeSantis, who is running for president, has taken to restrict voting.

He created an agency to crack down on voter fraud with troublesome results

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, both in Florida and across the United States. But in 2022, DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature created a new agency, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to crack down on it. The agency was one of the first of its kind in the country. DeSantis initially proposed funding it with $6m and filling it with 52 staffers. The proposal prompted outrage, with some noting it would have more manpower than some local law enforcement agencies have to investigate murder. The legislature eventually funded it with $1.1m in 2022 for 15 positions and increased the budget to $1.4m this year. Voting rights advocates saw the move as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate people into not voting.

He’s prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote

In August 2022, DeSantis held a press conference flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers announcing he was arresting 20 people and charging them with illegally registering and voting. They were the first charges filed under the Office of Election Crimes and Security and each charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fourteen of those charged were Black, and at least two of the men were arrested by armed officers.

It quickly emerged that all of those charged were confused about whether they could vote, partly because of a new state law. All 20 had prior criminal convictions that made them ineligible to vote, but said they had not been told that. All of them had received voter registration cards in the mail. Voting advocates said the prosecutions were thinly veiled efforts to discourage people with felony convictions from trying to vote after Florida changed the rules around their eligibility with bipartisan support.

Judges have dismissed several of the cases so far, noting that statewide prosecutors exceeded their jurisdiction in bringing them. The state is appealing those dismissals.

He’s intimidated groups trying to register voters

Since 2021, DeSantis and the Florida legislature have consistently made it harder for third-party groups to try to register voters in Florida. Voters of color are about five times more likely to register with such groups in the state.

The legislature has changed the law so that groups now have to turn in forms in the county where the voter lives (previously they could return them anywhere in the state). It imposed steep fines for errors: $500 for each form that was turned in to the wrong place. The state has raised the maximum a group could be fined from $1,000 to $250,000.

As of mid-July, at least 26 groups had racked up more than $100,000 in fines for registration errors. In some cases, the voter lived at the county border, just hundreds of feet away from the county line, and had listed the wrong address on their own registration form.

He’s directly weakened the influence of Black voters

When it came time to redraw Florida’s congressional districts in 2022, Republicans in the legislature proposed a map that gave them a hold on 18 of the state’s 28 congressional seats. One of the districts they left in Democratic hands was a north Florida district that stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee. The district was 46% Black and the only one represented by a Democrat in that part of the state.

DeSantis went out of his way to dismantle it. He objected to the legislature’s plan, saying he believed the district unconstitutionally benefited Black voters. When the legislature drew an alternative one that kept Jacksonville in one district and split up the rest, DeSantis objected to that too. Instead, he drew a map that chopped up the district into four where Republicans were heavily favored. Indeed, they won all four districts last fall.

In a court case DeSantis conceded his map diminished the power of Black voters in northern Florida, but is challenging the state measure that outlaws that kind of reduction as unconstitutional. In September, a Leon county judge sided with the challengers in the case and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts. The state is appealing to the Florida supreme court, which is likely to ultimately decide the case.