Florida Republicans push for police at the ballot box

In the ongoing push by Republicans to exempt police from all laws, duties and measures of decency, Florida leaders are hoping to free cops from the concept of intimidation at the ballot box. State senators are floating a bill that could end with posting cops at area ballot boxes to fight the nearly nonexistent threat of voter fraud.

State senators are pushing to create a new police force tasked with sniffing out voter fraud. The bill calls for 15 full-time investigators and 10 officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.  We doubt they’ll be posted up in locales like The Villages.

The proposal is actually less severe than one floated by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He called for a 52-member force with 20 sworn officers. Even this pared-down proposal is cause for alarm, however.

“I think we should be afraid of a political election police goon squad who can target specific communities, and they don’t need any kind of cause to knock on doors or sit at a drop box and scare people,” said Palm Beach Sen. Tina Scott Polsky.
Police have a checkered history when it comes to voting in the United States. White mobs regularly kept Black people from voting following the passage of the 15th amendment, with the implicit and frequently explicit support of the police — or, in the case of July Perry and the 1920 Ocoee riots, burned out and killed Black neighborhoods after they had the temerity to vote. Poll taxes, exorbitant fees meant to keep poor people (particularly poor Black people) from voting were often collected at local police stations. That’s before we even get into the larger project of the Republican party, which has come up with a host of new flavors of voter disenfranchisement following the Supreme Court’s effective gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

Republicans voted to advance the bill earlier this week.

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This article appears in Feb 2-8, 2022.