In August, Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced that the state of Florida was arresting 20 individuals who had knowingly registered and voted illegally within the 2020 elections. He mentioned these arrests have been “simply step one” in his try to crackdown on alleged wide-scale voter fraud within the state, even if there is no such thing as a proof to show voter fraud is a significant concern within the state.

These snared that day weren’t plotters of some large-scale election rigging scheme: Most people arrested had beforehand been convicted of homicide or felony intercourse offenses in Florida, which makes them robotically ineligible to vote there even after they’ve accomplished their sentences, probations, and paid different court-related charges.

Final week the Tampa Bay Occasions launched body-camera footage recorded by native police as they made a couple of arrests. It precipitated an uproar. The movies confirmed arrests of arrestees reacting with real shock and confusion on the prices. The police themselves additionally appear confused and even sympathetic at occasions.

The massive query the video itself and the damaging response to it presents is: If these individuals weren’t allowed to vote within the first place, why have been they being held to account when the state didn’t do correct background checks?

“Why would you let me vote if I wasn’t capable of vote?” requested Tony Patterson, one of many individuals getting arrested on video.

In line with Lawrence Mower, the Tallahassee correspondent for the Tampa Bay Occasions and the Miami Herald who first obtained the footage of the arrests, it’s as a result of the legal guidelines round who has eligibility to vote in Florida are extraordinarily complicated and have been since 2018. Mower spoke to Vox’s Sean Rameswaram earlier this week for an episode of Right now, Defined — Vox’s each day information explainer podcast — concerning the arrests, and DeSantis’s motivation for kick-starting this system that led to them.

Under is an excerpt of the dialog, edited for size and readability. There’s way more within the full podcast, so obtain Right now, Defined wherever you get podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Sean Rameswaram

What was the thought course of behind releasing the video of those arrests?

Lawrence Mower

We put this on the market pondering that that is completely different. You understand, witnessing these individuals get arrested for voting is simply not one thing you see day-after-day. You take a look at somebody like Romona Oliver, a 55-year-old girl, spent 18 years in jail for second-degree homicide. She’s bought a job. She’s been remarried since leaving jail. She’s arrested on her option to work. She appears like a grandma.

In one other case of Tony Patterson, a man who’s a registered intercourse offender. He’s stopped exterior of his home and police inform him you’ve bought a warrant on your arrest. And he says, “What for?” You may see from the video that he can’t actually consider it. There’s one other telling video, a man by the title of Nathan Har. He was given a voter ID card despite the fact that he was not allowed to vote. The state did an preliminary test and cleared him and he voted in 2020. The workplace arresting him even tells him that his story feels like a loophole.

Sean Rameswaram

You additionally write that police appear sympathetic towards the individuals getting arrested.

Lawrence Mower

Yeah, that’s fairly extraordinary. It’s not day-after-day that you simply hear a police officer lending recommendation on a intercourse offender’s protection whereas they’re arresting that individual. So native police appear perhaps skeptical or virtually sympathetic to those individuals’s conditions right here. It’s not the form of typical notion you have got right here whenever you hear “murderers and intercourse offenders.”

[Editor’s note: You can hear clips of the reactions being described in the Today, Explained episode or watch the videos here on the Tampa Bay Times’s website.]

Sean Rameswaram

What’s it concerning the reactions within the movies that causes shock?

Lawrence Mower

These individuals’s reactions problem the legal guidelines that they’re being accused of violating. They’re being accused of willfully violating the regulation, willfully voting once they have been ineligible. And I imply, simply take a look at the video. Does it look like these individuals knew that they have been violating the regulation on the time? I believe there’s most likely an actual query there for lots of people, maybe even a jury, whether or not or not these individuals, you already know, appeared to have willfully violated the regulation.

Sean Rameswaram

To grasp what’s occurring in these movies, you need to perceive Florida’s Modification 4. Are you able to remind us what that modification did?

Lawrence Mower

It allowed anybody with a felony conviction to vote. For those who didn’t have a felony intercourse offense in your document, for those who didn’t have a homicide in your document, and for those who had accomplished all phrases of your sentence. You understand, Modification 4, when it handed [via ballot initiative in 2018], was thought of the best growth of democracy in america for the reason that civil rights motion. We’re speaking as much as 1.4 million individuals in Florida, presumably getting the proper to vote again.

Sean Rameswaram

Governor DeSantis comes into workplace in 2019. What’s his relationship to Modification 4?

Lawrence Mower

He was in opposition to the modification, like many of the prime Republicans have been right here. And DeSantis inspired the legislature to attract a really arduous line on the fines and charges problem. He’s the one who actually pushed the legislature to require individuals with felony convictions to repay all fines and charges and restitution to victims earlier than being allowed to vote.

So DeSantis units up a brand new workplace to research voter fraud, proper?

Lawrence Mower

The Workplace of Election Crimes and Safety was one thing that DeSantis requested from the legislature in 2021. This can be a first-of-its-kind workplace, and these have been a few of the issues that some within the legislature had when this workplace was created. They have been questioning — how is that this workplace going for use? As a result of that is placing fairly a little bit of energy right into a politician’s palms.

Sean Rameswaram

Okay, and I think about this workplace is how we get to those arrests?

Lawrence Mower

In August, DeSantis held a press convention to announce the primary actions by the Workplace of Election Crimes and Safety. He proclaims 20 individuals getting arrested. It’s no debate. They weren’t allowed to vote, however however they got voter ID playing cards cleared by the secretary of state and weren’t stopped from going right into a polling place and casting a poll in 2020. Nonetheless, DeSantis proclaims these arrests, touts that these have been the primary actions by this new workplace. You understand that these persons are going to pay the value.

Sean Rameswaram

So what’s clear is that for those who purchase that there was widespread election fraud within the 2020 election, up to now, arresting 20 individuals who appear to have been confused about whether or not or not they’d the proper to vote isn’t actually getting at some bigger conspiracy to commit fraud in elections, proper?

Lawrence Mower

No, it’s not. You understand, DeSantis since 2020 has been underneath strain from conservatives in Florida to do an audit of Florida’s 2020 election, which President Trump received handily in Florida. It was a blowout by Florida requirements. So it’s form of no secret from the political class that this was a response to strain from the proper to do one thing about voter fraud. And these 20 arrests don’t level to any form of concerted fraud right here.

Sean Rameswaram

Proper, so what do these arrests really level to?

Lawrence Mower

It form of factors to faults with DeSantis’s personal workplace, in actual fact. You understand, the essential query right here is, why have been these individuals allowed to register to vote within the first place? Why can’t the secretary of state — once more, that is DeSantis’s personal workplace — why can’t they nonetheless let you know whenever you register to vote whether or not or not you’re eligible to vote?

Sean Rameswaram

What’s DeSantis after that he’ll indulge the individuals who actually need to see him police elections this fashion — whenever you admit that he doesn’t even appear to actually care that a lot about it?

Lawrence Mower

It’s no secret to anybody in Florida, a lot much less nationally, that DeSantis desires to run for president. And, after all, he’s operating for reelection this 12 months. And so this is a matter wherein he could also be perceived as susceptible, and it’s one thing that he has some management over. So he can create an election safety drive and make arrests, which will get headlines, which makes it appear like he’s doing one thing.