CNN –
Newly obtained police body camera video shows Tampa police officers arresting confused and dazed convicted felons for allegedly voting illegally in the 2020 election.
“I voted, but I didn’t commit fraud,” Romona Oliver can be heard saying on body camera video obtained by the Tampa Police Department. “I left. The guy told me I was free and clear to go vote or whatever because I had done my time,” he said. Oliver’s attorney says he received a voter registration card and thought he had right to vote
The videos, first published by The Tampa Bay Times, offer new insight into a far-reaching state operation earlier this summer to crack down on alleged voter fraud.
On August 18, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had arrested 20 people accused of illegally voting in the 2020 election. He disclosed the charges at a conference in celebratory press at the Broward County Courthouse, where he was flanked by police officers and state Attorney General Ashley Moody.
“As convicted murderers and sex offenders, neither person was eligible to vote,” DeSantis said.
“They didn’t get their rights back and yet they went ahead and voted anyway,” DeSantis said at the time. “This is against the law, and now they will pay the price.”
Mark Rankin, a Tampa attorney who represents Oliver pro-bono, told CNN that Oliver served nearly 20 years in state prison for a second-degree murder conviction.
“She served her time and got out. And she got out around the time that Amendment 4 was passed, which affected the voting rights of felons. Her understanding was that felons had their rights restored.” .
Rankin says Oliver was accosted at the bus stop one day on his way to work by someone registering voters, and she told them he was a felon. The person then told Oliver that he could fill out the form and if he was eligible he would get a voter registration card and if he wasn’t eligible he wouldn’t get the card.
Oliver received a voter registration card in the mail. He later went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office to get a new driver’s license and was sent an updated voter registration card with his new address, according to Rankin.
“The state of Florida and the local supervisor of elections told him twice, ‘Here’s your voter registration card.’ You are, as far as we are concerned, legally eligible to vote.” And so she voted and was surprised when she was arrested.”
“She was shocked and upset because she thought her rights had been restored by the amendment. She didn’t know any different. And the state of Florida, she believed, was telling her she had the right to vote. And now they’ve pulled the rug from her under. I would never have voted if I had known I was ineligible,” Rankin said.
Oliver pleaded not guilty to the illegal voting charge and has a trial scheduled for December in Hillsborough County. County records show she was released on her own recognizance the same day she was arrested.
The Tampa Police Department made the arrests on behalf of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the lead agency in the investigation, a police department spokesman told CNN.
CNN also reached out to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, which was involved in some of the arrests.
The arrests marked the first public appearance by the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security, a controversial new investigative agency created this year and championed by DeSantis to look into voting irregularities. Created under a bill passed this year to overhaul voting in Florida, the office was given a 15-person staff to launch investigations and allowed DeSantis to assign 10 state law enforcement officers to help investigate crimes electoral
But almost immediately after the state announced the charges, questions began to arise about the arrests and whether individuals knew they were violating the law when they voted.
Under state law, it is the Florida Department of State’s job to “identify registered voters who have been convicted of a felony” and “notify the supervisor and provide a copy of supporting documentation indicating the voter’s possible ineligibility to be registered “.
In the five counties where there were arrests, the local supervisor of elections told CNN that the state did not inform the people arrested that they were ineligible to vote.
DeSantis continued to defend the arrests and at a later press conference blamed some local election offices who, he said, “don’t care about election laws.”
But the Office of Electoral Crime and Security wrote a letter to an election supervisor saying individuals voted illegally “through no fault of your own.” The letter, obtained by CNN, was sent Aug. 18 by Pete Antonacci, who served as the first director of the Office of Election Crimes and Security until he died Sept. 23 after a medical episode at Florida State Capitol.
The arrests captured on body camera footage are also illustrative of the confusion that still surrounds a successful 2018 constitutional amendment in Florida to restore the voting rights of some felons who had completed their sentences.
The constitutional amendment, approved overwhelmingly by voters in a statewide referendum, said people convicted of murder and certain sex crimes were ineligible to get their rights back.
But the law that implemented the constitutional amendment specified that an ineligible felon who votes in error violates the law if he “willfully submits any false voter registration information.” State Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg and sponsor of the legislation, has said on social media that most convicted felons have no intention of breaking the law.
After the Tampa Bay Times published the body camera video, Brandes tweeted from his verified account, “Looks like the opposite of ‘willful,'” and suggested the state will fight to prove its case in court.
“I hope they have the courage to drop the charges or go to trial and produce evidence of malicious intent,” Brandes wrote.