One of the 20 Florida residents accused of voting illegally in the 2020 election by Gov. Ron DeSantis when he announced their arrests in August had his charges dismissed Friday, ABC News reported.
Robert Lee Wood, 56, was charged with one count of making a false affirmation on a voter application and one count of voting as an unqualified elector. He faced up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines and fees. But his charges were dismissed by a Miami judge ruling that the statewide prosecutor lacked jurisdiction.
The state prosecutor, overseeing all 20 election fraud cases, indicted Wood, saying he registered and voted knowing he was ineligible due to his previous felony record. Wood was convicted of second-degree murder in 1991. But Wood claimed he did not know he was ineligible and registered in 2020 after he was approached by a canvasser and was sent a voter registration card by the state.
The ruling in Wood’s case may influence the 19 other election fraud cases brought by the state’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security. Several of those charged had prior felony convictions. Local and national publications reported that, similar to Wood, those charged didn’t know they were ineligible to vote and were not informed of it until after they voted.
The arrests of the 20 Floridians days before primary elections drew increased scrutiny after police body camera footage released by The Tampa Bay Times in October revealed the scenes of confusion on all sides.
The state’s 2018 Amendment 4 changed its constitution to extend voter eligibility to nearly all people with felony records if they satisfied all the terms of their sentence. The amendment did not restore the right to vote to those convicted of murder and sex offenses, and in 2019 another law was passed to clear up any confusion about which crimes qualified as murder and sex offenses.
It’s the secretary of state’s responsibility to rule out ineligible voters. However, the Miami Herald reported that “the Secretary of State’s office admitted it did not have enough resources to quickly verify whether a person had a murder or sex offense on their record or if they still owed restitution to victims.”
When the state launched the first Office of Election Crimes and Security in the country in early July, critics called it a voter “intimidation” tactic. More than 11 million Florida residents voted in the 2020 election, but no evidence indicates voter fraud was widespread in the state or elsewhere in the U.S.
DeSantis claimed in August that more prosecutions would come, with investigators focusing on people who voted in two separate jurisdictions and undocumented immigrants.
“This is just the first step,” DeSantis said. “There are going to be foreign nationals. We want the federal government to be working constructively on this, and so far, that has not been the case. We have an obligation to make sure that U.S. citizens are voting.”