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Republicans in three states have proposed shock forces against election crimes, though fraud cases remain minimal.

By Michael Vinos

WASHINGTON — Echoing the rigged election confidence that has a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least 3 states are proposing to create police forces to exclusively hunt down voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of crimes that experts say is small at best.

The plans are part of a new wave of projects that Republicans say target voter fraud. They are condemned by voter advocates and even by some local election supervisors, who call them a costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will give the first-place winners. elections for the November midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race.

The next round of election clashes comes after the apparent demise of the Democratic voting rights bill in Washington on Thursday. This reminds us that while the Democratic timetable in Washington is dead, Republican efforts in the state to make voting more difficult show no symptoms. to slow down

Supporters say the additional app will detect cases of fraud and reassure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure U. S. elections are accurate and legitimate. and vote. And Democrats say the main explanation for why the Republican electorate has lost confidence in the ballot is that Republicans are relentlessly focused on fraud, which is almost entirely imaginary.

The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis last week asked the state legislature for $5. 7 million to create a 52-person force for “election and security crimes” within the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which DeSantis has been promoting since the fall, would come with 20 sworn in police officers and lockers across the state.

This was followed on Thursday by the commitment of David Perdue, a former Georgian senator and Republican candidate for governor, to create his own electoral police force “to make elections in Georgia the safest in the country. “Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in 2020, said Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican seeking re-election, weakened electoral criteria and refused to investigate allegations of fraud following President Biden’s narrow victory in the state.

And in Arizona, a staunch supporter of former President Donald J. ‘s lies. Trump on a stolen election, state Sen. Wendy Rogers, has introduced a law to identify a $5 million “election” in that of the governor with the force to subpoena witnesses and confiscate election materials.

Rogers’ bill will most likely face a rough road in the legislature, where Republicans have little control and have been hit by a widely ridiculed multibillion-dollar investigation into the results of the 2020 election. Clients of the Florida and Georgia proposals are less clear. .

The proposals are the latest twist in a decades-long Republican-led crusade against voter fraud that has grown since M’s election defeat. Trump in 2020 and his false claim that he was robbed of victory.

DeSantis took a hard line in November when he unveiled his proposal, saying the new unit would prosecute crimes against which the local election official shrugged. do? If you call the election office, they don’t do anything,” he said during an appearance in West Palm Beach.

“I assure you,” he added. The first user who gets caught, no one will need to start over after that. “

None of the 3 states, and indeed none of the other 47 and the District of Columbia, reported more than a small number of voter fraud cases after the 2020 election. DeSantis said after the 2020 vote that it was ” the state that got things right and that other states emulate. The only notable indication of wrongdoing in Florida was the recent fraudulent arrest of 4 men at a retirement complex north of Orlando. At least two of them gave the impression of winter Floridians accused of voting either there and in the colder northern states.

But Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Perdue say their strike forces are still needed to eliminate additional electoral irregularities and the weakened religion of their voters in the honesty of the vote. The same reasoning has fueled so-called audits of electoral effects and repression of election regulations across Republican-led legislatures across the country.

Why is the right to vote a challenge now? In 2020, as a result of the pandemic, millions of other people followed in-user or mail-in early voting, especially among Democrats. Buoyed by Donald Trump’s false statements about mail-in ballots in the hope of canceling the election, the Republican Party continued with a series of new electoral restrictions.

What are Republicans looking to do? Generally speaking, the party takes a two-pronged approach: imposing more restrictions on voting (especially mail-in voting) and giving the legislatures of GOP-led states more about the mechanisms for presenting and counting ballots.

Why are these legislative efforts important? The Republican push to tighten election regulations has fueled doubts about the integrity of democratic procedure in the United States. It is very likely that many restrictions are for an electorate of color disproportionately.

How did the Democrats back down? Nineteen states passed 34 laws restricting voting in 2021. Some of the top laws have been enacted in battlefield states like Texas, Georgia and Florida. Republican lawmakers are making plans for a new wave of election legislation in 2022.

Will this new legislation influence the elections? Maybe. Maybe not. Some laws will make it more complicated for certain teams to vote, cause confusion, or create longer wait times at polling stations. But the new restrictions may backfire for Republicans, especially in rural spaces that once voted by mail. .

Sweeping revisions to election law enacted by lawmakers in Florida and Georgia last spring severely limit the use of popular mailboxes for mailing ballots, require identification to download mail-in ballots, do so for voter registration campaigns, and limit or prohibit interactions, such as the distribution of snacks or water. with the electorate queuing up to vote.

Mr. Trump won comfortably in Florida with about 370,000 votes in 2020, and his small losses in Arizona and Georgia were shown through audits, recounts, and even the prominent Cyber Ninjas poll of the Maricopa County vote.

“We don’t want additional investigations into elections that are being taken positions freely and fairly,” said Alex Gulotta, Arizona director of the advocacy organization All Voting Is Local. “We’ve established this over and over again. That’s more pablum for other people than fraud and conspiracy theories and lies that the last election was stolen.

Neither the new legislation nor the electoral autopsies seem to have shaken the confidence of many Trump supporters that the electoral formula is suspicious. Some researchers say they see the police force as the latest attempt through politicians for this itch.

Offers to combat so-called fraud fit the norm for Republican candidates who need to win over voters, Barry Burden, director of the Center for Election Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. 2024, whether Trump or not, will likely be part of his platform,” Mr. Burden said.

The concept of an electoral police force is not new, even in the states where it is proposed. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger already oversees 23 investigators whose jurisdiction includes election irregularities, and a deputy state attorney general exclusively prosecutes crimes in elections, the judiciary and local governments. Arizona’s attorney general heads a new “election integrity” investigation unit, and election violations in Florida are prosecuted through state and local authorities, as is the case in most states.

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