Here we go again, Florida, guess what? 70 year old woman arrested, voter fraud. This is Governor Ron DeSantis' election Fraud task force. Some made up baloney that he created, put up the picture full mast. [00:00:18] Let me explain what happened to Ms. Marsha Ervin, 69 years of age, Tallahassee. This Tallahassee woman is just one of dozens of Black Floridians to be arrested for voter fraud as [00:00:36] the Governor's Election Crimes Task Force continues their investigations and crackdowns on instances of fraud in the State. I'm gonna give you a background on what happened with Ms. [00:00:53] Ervin, she was sent to prison 2016, okay, after being found guilty of aggravated neglect of an elderly person. She was released in 2018. Upon her release, now, she spent her time, all right, she did a bid upon her release. [00:01:09] Officials at the prison never issued her any information on whether or not she could vote. However, she went on to successfully register to vote in 2020. No issue, she was allowed to do so, the government provided access for this, although court records show Ervin is still on probation and cannot vote until [00:01:27] November 2023, something obviously the government did not make clear. The government did issue a voter registration card in 2020. She voted in the 2020 general election and 2022 primary. Now, remember the first time we talked about this, I said, [00:01:45] if they really wanted to stop a person from voting, the systems that they use in the back end, they could easily use in the front end. Because the same systems that will check to see if you are registered and on parole or probation, those systems are able to be [00:02:04] applied in the front end rather than in the back end. After you've received your voter registration card, after you have successfully been able to vote, and after the conclusion of an election. You see the picture here? [00:02:20] It's a setup, it's done intentionally. There's more, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement began looking into Ms. Ervin's voting record, after investigators received some information from the Office of Election Crimes and Security, a task force that [00:02:38] DeSantis recently established to investigate voter fraud allegation. Ervin's attorney, Akbar, insisted that she thought she was able to vote after she was released in 2018 due to news reports announcing that the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of felons would be restored. [00:02:54] And that is accurate as far as a news report that was said, it leaves out context but the report did happen. Months later, DeSantis signed a bill, the Florida Legislature passed to withhold voter eligibility for hundreds of thousands of felons until they met their past legal financial obligations. [00:03:15] So now you have nuance. Why? Because that's the way the governor wanted it, creates confusion. Confusion and controversy ensued as a result of that, many voters could not determine their own eligibility. [00:03:31] And when you try to determine it, you get the runaround. And the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition filed a federal lawsuit due to the conflicting statutes. So you have one saying, you got your rights restored, then you got another one say, but if you owe some money. If you owe some money and you're still on probation and you're paying a fine or [00:03:48] a fee because of that probation, you technically owe money. So while it's a yes, for you as a no, but nobody's going to tell you that because they're not mandated to do so. And truthfully, most government workers don't know. [00:04:03] There's more background on the arrest. Ms. Marsha Ervin, damned 70 years of age, was sleeping in a home on September 29 when Tallahassee police knocked on the door at 2 AM. [00:04:21] She let them in wondering what could be the reason for their visit, and they told her they had a warrant for her arrest. What Ervin has in common with several other Floridians [00:04:39] who face the same charges is that she's a felon who was able to register to vote after her release from prison. Others have been affected by these policies. Just this year, 63 year old Toye La Rocca was arrested [00:04:58] in Fort Walton Beach for voting while still on probation. She told investigators she was confused by the arrest since she was issued a voter registration card, they gave her one. The same thing happened to a 57 year old Ronald Lee Miller in Miami late August. [00:05:19] Although he was convicted of murder, a campaigner at a grocery store told him he was eligible to vote and encouraged him to register. He was also issued a voter registration card by the government, but police came to his home with a warrant for his arrest. [00:05:37] Benjamin Crump, attorney of law, is working with Ervin in an effort to get these charges dropped. I do know the statute of Florida, it is common in most jurisdictions as it relates to voting fraud. You have to do it with malice intent. [00:05:55] You have the form manslayer, meaning you know you're committing a crime, okay? It's required that you know you're committing a crime. What do you have here? You don't have anyone involved in a conspiracy. [00:06:10] This is not a system, an enterprise, this is not a recoat charge. These are older individuals who made a mistake. They made a mistake, okay, because of an intentionally vague law and [00:06:29] confusing contrary statutes in the State. But the governor, well, he made a special committee to do what? Not really just to arrest a 63 year old here, [00:06:47] a 70 year old there, it's to put fear in everybody else. It's to make them afraid to even ask the question, thus creating an innate voter suppression in the State of Florida, [00:07:05] in particular with Black people. Ms. Khan, thoughts here? >> Speaker 2: Voter fraud is a real thing that happens on occasion, but this ain't it and they know that. It's always frustrating whenever a real thing is used as a boogeyman or as a political talking point, because it dilutes the actual message. [00:07:24] It diminishes the actual significance of the thing when it does happen, and it's irresponsible when politicians use it for political purposes that are anything besides trying to actually prevent the thing from happening in the future. And punishing a behavior after it's happened is different from taking [00:07:40] preventative measures against it from happening in the first place. And I'm not saying not to punish wrongdoing once it is discovered, but punishing people who were trying to do the right thing seems like the wrong way to go about addressing voter fraud, especially when those people weren't at fault. [00:07:55] The State and the district are supposed to be managing these processes. They know that it was a failure of the election officials, not the citizen, and they know that. And it's like what you said, unfortunately, what they're doing is discouraging people from registering to vote and then from voting, and they seem [00:08:11] to be targeting a certain demographic, and that is exactly what they want. >> Speaker 1: That's right, it is insane that the government can give you a card, a voting card, allow you to vote, accept the vote, cast it, and then come back and arrest you for voting. [00:08:28] If it's illegal for you to have a gun and somebody buys you a gun anyway, puts the gun in your hand, tell you you could use this gun anytime you choose to, guess what happens, you become part of the criminal act because you knew [00:08:44] they were not supposed to have a gun legally. For some reason, that logic doesn't apply here in Florida.