Dumb Enough to Believe the Government

Entrapment based on the false assurances of government officials is fun!

After failing to uncover evidence of what has been alleged as the greatest electoral fraud in the history of the world, the back-up plan for some in that camp is to display a "tough on election fraud" approach. But in effect, it looks like they're taking out their frustrations on random nobodies. One of those guys was Hervis Rogers, who went viral during the 2020 election for waiting in line at a polling place for six hours and being the last person to vote. He eagerly spoke to and gave his name to a TV news crew that was on site, presumably proud to showcase to the public how committed he was to voting.

But, it turns out, Rogers was a convicted felon. Now 62 years old, he had been convicted of a burglary almost 3 decades prior, spent 9 years in prison, and was eventually released in 2004. But he remained on parole until June 2020, and Texas law makes it a felony for anyone to "knowingly" vote while still serving a parole sentence. The publicity of being broadcast as the face of the voting franchise is likely what prompted an investigation into his voting record. Although his voting rights were restored in time for the 2020 election, Rogers had somehow cast ballots on two separate occasions (in March 2020 and November 2018) while he was still on parole.

Texas' Attorney General, Ken Paxton, brought the hammer down on Rogers. Paxton had been one of the most enthusiastic boosters of Trump's stolen election theories, and he was responsible for filing the doomed SCOTUS case in this realm. Paxton publicized Rogers' case as a way to flex how seriously he takes allegations of election fraud (Note: Paxton has ongoing criminal legal issues. He was indicted for securities fraud in 2015, and in 2020 several of his deputies had resigned in protest and accused him of bribery and corruption. It's likely that Paxton's enthusiasm in this area was leveraged for the purpose of seeking a presidential pardon). Rogers was arrested and held in jail on $100,000 bail.

Pretrial bail is nominally intended to encourage good behavior from the accused while they wait for their trial. And with that in mind, it's impossible for me to appreciate how someone accused of illegally voting is somehow such a dramatic danger to the community to warrant $100k bail (especially since by the time he was arrested, Rogers' voting rights had been restored for more than a year). Sky-high bail in this case appears to have been used as a way to impose punishment now, regardless of the presumption of innocence, and regardless of what ends up happening to his charges down the road.

Because the facts of Rogers' situation meant that pretrial detention was very likely the only thing they ever would've gotten out of his case. It's difficult to see how the prosecution could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rogers "knew" he was legally barred from voting. After all, he was able to cast ballots on two separate occasions with no issues, and he showed no hesitation about speaking to a camera crew.

The same thing is again playing out, but this time in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis has similarly jumped on the "tough-on-fraud" bandwagon and has endorsed several proposals, including advocating for a ballot signature match system which likely would have disqualified his own voter registration. DeSantis recently held a press conference to announce that 20 people with felony convictions who voted in the 2020 election will be arrested and charged. This was showcased as the "opening salvo" for the newly minted "Office of Election Crimes and Security" that was created by DeSantis.

Before 2018, Florida had permanent felony disenfranchisement laws (one of only four states). The only way for a felon to regain their voting rights then was to petition the State Board of Executive Clemency. Gov. Charlie Crist had instituted a system of automatic restoration and approved 155,000 applications during his tenure. Gov. Rick Scott ended this system, and the number of approved applications plummeted to 3,000. Florida voters ended up overwhelmingly approving Amendment 4 in 2018, which instituted automatic voting right restoration for felons "after they complete all terms of their sentence". That specific clause became the subject of intense litigation, and the Legislature codified that "all terms" included paying all outstanding fines.

A persistent problem with this implementation is that nobody seems to have a good idea of when exactly "complete all terms" actually happens. State officials have repeatedly admitted in court they have no good centralized system in place to make this determination. Court records (many of which several decades old) are all over the place and poorly catalogued, with each local clerk's office using a different format. Sometimes fines are collected by multiple different government agencies, and there is no easy system in place to double-check the ledgers.

The 20 people whose arrests DeSantis touted so far appear to have been in the same situation: They were specifically told by election authorities that they could vote.

Given how messy Amendment 4's implementation has been, it's unclear how any normal person is expected to navigate to an answer on their own. Getting an assurance from the local election authority seems to be the best that anyone can expect. So if anyone should get into trouble, perhaps it's the local officials who messed up? That's the tack some on the DeSantis camp are staking. Except... the director of the "Office of Election Crimes and Security", who was appointed by DeSantis, explicitly told local officials they were not at fault. Local officials do not have access to all the relevant state-wide data, and they instead rely on the state via Division of Elections for this information.

To summarize, state officials in charge of tabulating incomplete felony sentences messed up and gave faulty information to local election officials. Those local officials approved the voting registration of people with felony convictions who by any measure appear to believe they were eligible to vote. Those people voted. Almost two years later, they get publicly arrested and dragged to jail for being dumb enough to believe someone from the government. Anyone want to defend this move?