Last August, we dug into the story of how an election security office established in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis had identified and charged twenty people who were accused of voter fraud in the 2020 election. It was a complicated story that seemed to speak more to inefficiencies in the state’s electoral process than any sort of subversive effort to commit fraud. Some of the cases were later dismissed due to technicalities involving questions of which county brought the charges. But this week, the first of the twenty cases made its way into a Tampa courtroom and was heard by a jury. Given all of the headlines these stories were generating and the controversial nature of the charges, the whole thing was over in a shockingly short time. A jury was selected and seated on Monday. The trial began on Tuesday morning and the jury came back with a pair of verdicts by that evening. Nathan Hart, 49, was convicted of false affirmation because he registered to vote, but he was found not guilty of “voting as an unqualified elector,” the actual voter fraud charge. (Tampa Bay Times)Read More
First Florida voter fraud trial ends in a single day
