Will Florida’s ‘election police’ be afraid of ‘ghosts?’ Lawmakers, dump this idea | Editorial

The Frank Artiles “ghost” candidate scandal has called into question the results of one Miami Senate race and maybe two others, one in Miami and another in Seminole County, all won by Republicans. It’s turning into one of the worst abuses of our election system in recent times.

That has us thinking: Maybe we were too hasty when we said Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed election security office was a waste of time and tax money. Surely this kind of potential misconduct would be its reason for existing.

Nope.

Palm Coast Republican Sen. Travis Hutson, sponsor of the Senate bill that would create an election security office, said this week that the special investigative unit that DeSantis has called for would only deal with “election fraud — not candidacy fraud,” according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Uh, what?

Let’s review: When a former state senator — Artiles, in this case — is accused of paying a friend $40,000 to run as a no-party candidate in an attempt to siphon off votes and sway the outcome of a Miami-Dade state Senate race, we think that pretty clearly qualifies as a potential case of election fraud.

When that NPA candidate (Alex Rodriguez) coincidentally has the same last name as the Democratic incumbent (José Javier Rodríguez) and got 3% of the vote, enough to influence the outcome? And if the payments from Artiles weren’t listed on campaign finance reports? Yep. Sounds like election fraud to us.

Fraud isn’t even common

But even if we could follow the mental gymnastics it takes to distinguish between “election fraud” and “candidacy fraud,” we have to point out that election fraud of most kinds is relatively rare in Florida, and Republicans know it. DeSantis has said that Florida’s election in November 2020 ran so well that it should serve a model for other states. Secretary of State Laurel Lee said she was “confident in the security and integrity of our 2020 election results.”

So why do we need this new election police office again? We don’t.

Hutson said state prosecutors and the state’s ethics commission are already handling campaign-finance violations, so the new office doesn’t need to. Maybe so. Following that line of logic, though, we can say that states attorney offices are already prosecuting election fraud, too. We even have a recent example of that: Three residents of The Villages in Central Florida were arrested in December on charges that they cast more than one ballot in the 2020 election.

No special state-run investigative unit needed.

Tallahassee’s legislators need to reject this proposal. They should do it because it will waste taxpayer money and because it’s unnecessary — useless even. It’s a politically motivated scheme concocted by the GOP to once again make voters think there’s a problem when there isn’t.

DeSantis, trying to quell dissent in the far-right arm of his party calling for an “audit” of the 2020 election, has said he wants it. Don’t look for lawmakers to buck him any time soon.

But they should.

This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 5:49 PM.