Let Floridians vote in Iowa? What were they thinking? | Editorial

It’s nothing new for presidential candidates to ask their home folks to help them out in Iowa before its first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses. Jimmy Carter’s “Peanut Brigades” trudged through snow to put the Georgia former governor on a path to the presidency in 1976. Others followed, including former Florida governors Reubin Askew, Bob Graham and Jeb Bush.

But until now, none had suggested actually packing the caucuses with ineligible out-of-state voters.

That’s what First Lady Casey DeSantis did on behalf of her husband, Gov. Ron DeSantis. He compounded her mistake by sitting silently during a Fox News interview as she called on supporters — her “Mamas for DeSantis” — to participate in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. He could have saved them both a major embarrassment with a prompt clarification.

“We’re asking all of these moms and grandmoms to come, from wherever it might be — North Carolina, South Carolina — and to descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus,” she said. “You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus.”

Yes, you do.

Iowans clarified things

The Iowa Republican Party promptly made that clear. So did the Des Moines Register, the state’s largest newspaper. Both said no one can participate in the caucuses — one in each of nearly 1,700 precincts — without being a legal resident of the state and of the precinct, and be registered or willing to register in the party holding the caucuses. IDs are required.

After the uproar, Ms. DeSantis posted on social media that of course “voting in the Iowa caucuses is limited to registered voters.” She noted that they could still campaign there. Separately, the governor said non-Iowa voters “could help with it” and implied that they might be allowed to speak at the caucuses.

Even that is doubtful. The way the regulations read, out-of-staters couldn’t do more than stand outside the caucuses to canvass voters going in.

A Trump overreach, as usual

Trump’s campaign predictably exploited the couple’s unforced error, deploring “their dirty and illegal tactics … to rig the caucus through fraud.”

That was a bit hyperbolic, to be sure. There was no harm done, other than some momentary confusion among Nebraska voters whom the Washington Post interviewed at a Nikki Haley rally in Sioux City, Iowa.

But it will continue to backfire on Ron DeSantis. And it should, considering he talks so much about “election integrity” in Florida.

DeSantis keeps capitalizing on a right-wing myth that U.S. elections are vulnerable to widespread cheating by ineligible voters. Exploiting that fear, he got the Florida Legislature to establish a specialized election police unit.

It has accomplished nothing so far except to turn up a few isolated cases of retirees charged with voting both here and elsewhere during the last election, along with a handful of people, mostly Black, who voted despite still owing fines and costs from old felony convictions.

The DeSantis administration deliberately does not educate people about those restrictions, which were enacted to undermine the voting rights restoration initiative, Amendment 4, that voters had approved. At least one person who was arrested had received a voter ID card certifying eligibility.

Some elected state attorneys refused to prosecute such flimsy cases, so DeSantis had them brought by the Office of Statewide Prosecutor, despite a law clearly and properly limiting its jurisdiction to crimes committed in more than one circuit. After judges began throwing those cases out, too, he had the Legislature expand the office’s reach to election cases.

Expanding the elections police

Last week, just before Ms. DeSantis casually advocated irregular voting in Iowa, DeSantis proposed a Florida budget including an expanded $2.2 million for his election police. That’s $2.2 million too much.

Apart from 16 full-time positions, the request also calls for more than $600,000 in contracted services and other non-staff expenses. That smells like a slush fund for campaign contributors.

The Iowa boo-boo may be small stuff compared to the question of prohibited coordination between the official DeSantis campaign and the two “independent” political committees now working for him in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere.

There’s been such turmoil in the original one, Never Back Down, that three top officers recently quit or were fired. It reportedly has been paying for some of his travel, which would seem to be evidence of illegal coordination.

Such “independent” committees, unbound by the laws on how candidates themselves raise and spend campaign money, are supposed to operate without coordination. They’re not supposed to even say “vote for” or “vote against.”

The separation is widely ignored by the Federal Election Commission, but it still holds the potential for civil fines and criminal prosecution.

Never Back Down was capitalized largely with $82.5 million left over from the Friends of Ron DeSantis state political committee. What’s problematic is that nearly all that money came from corporations that cannot legally contribute to federal campaigns, or exceeded the limit of $3,300 per election for individual contributions to them.

DeSantis’ appointed secretary of state, Cord Byrd, said it’s legal to launder the money into his federal PAC. Whether federal prosecutors would see it that way should concern the governor, especially if the 2024 election puts Trump in control of the Department of Justice.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.