Florida voter who threatened poll workers pleads guilty, faces up to five years in prison
If you threaten people at a polling place, it’s no trifling matter — you could go to prison.
Take the example of Joshua David Lubitz, a 39-year-old Broward County native who learned this hard lesson after he threatened election workers who assisted him and other voters at a senior center in Sunrise during the primary election last August.
“Should I kill them one by one or should I blow the place up?” a federal indictment accused Lubitz of saying at the polling station, then he “pointed his finger and thumb in a gun-like fashion towards election workers.”
On Wednesday, Lubitz pleaded guilty to voter intimidation in Miami federal court and now faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on July 25. Because he cut a plea deal, he’s expected to get less than the maximum.
During the court hearing, Lubitz’s lawyer, Jonathan Friedman, said it was his client’s decision to plead guilty against his advice, arguing “this was a triable case.” But Lubitz told U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz that he wanted to accept responsibility for his crime, so the judge accepted his guilty plea.
Prosecutors Harry Wallace and Jeremy Thompson said that if Lubitz had gone to trial, they would have been able to prove he made threats to the election workers, who told FBI agents about his intimidating statements and behavior at the Sunrise polling place on Aug. 17, 2022.
Even after he cast his ballot, the prosecutors said Lubitz, a registered Democrat, continued to act aggressively towards the poll workers.
“After Lubitz voted, the poll deputy who was inside the polling station thanked Lubitz for voting, to which Lubitz uttered an obscenity,” according to a factual statement signed by the defendant. “The poll worker then exited the polling station behind Lubitz to continue to watch him as he went to the parking lot to leave.
“As Lubitz drove past the entrance to the polling site, he extended his arm toward the two poll workers and made a threatening gesture toward them with his hand.”
In the run-up to last fall’s gubernatorial election in Florida, local officials expressed fears about voter intimidation because of the divisive climate of the electorate following the 2020 presidential election in which Democrat Joe Biden unseated GOP President Donald Trump. Lubitz’s case turned out to be one of the few examples, and it’s unclear from the court record whether politics even played a role in his misconduct.
This story was originally published May 10, 2023 at 1:58 PM.
