 So, apparently, I guess you have a warrant? For what? I'm not sure. For voter stuff, man. For voters. It's what it is. I think the agents with FDLE talked to you last week about some voter fraud, voter stuff, when you weren't supposed to be voting maybe. They have reduced your bond quite a bit. It's two felony charges for voter fraud, but they reduced it to $500 bonds. So it's $1,000 total. Oh my God, man. What the? Yes, sir. So, unfortunately, right now, we're going to have to take you to jail, but you got a bond right away. What you just watched was the result of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's Orwellian Office of Election Crimes and Security created earlier this year to tackle voter fraud despite previously claiming that the vote in Florida was secure already, but he created this unit perhaps to expand his power and score a few political points. But we're learning what this new election fraud unit looks like in practice because of a report released by the Tampa Bay Times, and it's pretty ugly. So as Common Dreams explains, police in the Tampa area arrested 19 people, including 13 black residents and 12 registered Democrats. The people said they had been led to believe they were legally allowed to vote when they cast ballots in recent years following Florida residents' overwhelming approval of a voting rights referendum in 2018. The passage of the referendum meant that voting rights were restored to 1.4 million people with past felony convictions, but the law excluded people who were convicted of sex offenses or murder. So eligibility of felons was limited to people who were not previously convicted of murder or sex crimes. Now, subsequent laws were passed that further limited eligibility so that way if you were a felon and you weren't convicted of one of those crimes, well, you still couldn't vote if you owed outstanding fines or fees. And a pro-publica analysis found that after Amendment 4 had passed, more than 31,000 felons registered to vote. But there was still a lot of confusion about who could and couldn't vote. And that's specifically because the state didn't purge ineligible people from the rolls if they had registered to vote. And to make matters worse, people unknowingly registered to vote not knowing that they weren't eligible. And so you're going to see in this second clip here that everyone was confused. The people who were being arrested and the cops were confused as well as to why they were arresting these people when they didn't willfully commit a crime. So you have a warrant. It's for voter fraud. Okay. Hear me out. It's an ROR. You know what an ROR is? Oh my God. You go in, you get booked, and then they're going to release you from booking. You can go right out. You're going to be right back out. Right back out. Okay. But you have a warrant. Okay. I'm like voter fraud. I'm voter but I ain't fraud. Commit no fraud. Well, so that's the thing. I don't know exactly what happened with it, but you do have a warrant. That's what it's for. Oh my God. Yeah. So I don't know what happened with that, but. I got out because I told me that I was being scared to go vote for whatever comes out of my time. Yeah. I was feeling it. The warrant was just made yesterday. So I... You guys talking to each other? Yeah, I know. I don't know, ma'am. I honestly couldn't tell you. Okay. Hey, unfortunately you got a warrant out, okay? Warrant? Yes, sir. I'm going to put your hands behind your back for me. Well, no. But when I... No one ever really explained all that much to me. I told the guys when they came out here that I was at the driver's license. Can you bring the driver's license? Yeah. The guy there asked me, he says, hey, can you... Okay. He said, hey. You were just voting for the phone. He said, you're calling. I'm pretty sure I can. He goes, well, are you still on probation? He said, no. I got off probation like a month ago. He goes, well, then you can probably vote. Hey, you just fill out the form. And if you can vote, then I'll have to give you a card. You can have up and you won't. And I'm like, all right. Then there's your defense. You know what I'm saying? That sounds like a loophole to me. So I vote, but we can hope. It's because of the sex spinner thing that you can't vote. So, I mean, the warrant is for the voting deal, I guess, but... I guess it's kind of all tied together. Yeah, I guess they're doing like some kind of roundup thing or something for all the ones that were within the county. Yeah, I had to do one of these this morning already. Oh, really? It doesn't say it on the... Let's walk over to my car, okay? Why are you all doing this now and this happened years ago? I don't know. I have no idea, man. This is crazy, man. Y'all put me in jail for something I didn't know nothing about. Why would y'all let me vote if I wasn't able to vote? Because of politics, that's the answer to that question. Now, I think that the attorney for one of these people, he explained that the best. Mark Rankin, an attorney for Oliver, told the Times he believed DeSantis' office targeted people with past felonies so the governor could announce the arrests at a later press conference and claim his administration was cracking down on convicted criminals. That's a political strategy, Rankin told the Times. And I think he's absolutely correct. DeSantis is doing this to make an example out of these folks, to not only claim that he is cracking down on convicted criminals, but to also say, look, Democrats claim that there's no evidence for voter fraud. I just presented you with the evidence. Sure, maybe it's the case that these folks were inadvertently entrapped into voting when they weren't eligible to vote. But still, voter fraud, it was committed. Here's your evidence. It's incredibly insidious, but this is modern American politics where politicians will do and say anything to get ahead, even if it means screwing over people who by no fault of their own committed a crime. Now, the good news is that it doesn't seem as if any of the people arrested on August 18th, including the ones that we saw in the video, are going to be charged with a crime because a standard in Florida law is that you have to willfully commit a crime in order to be charged with it. And these people very clearly did not know that they committed a crime. So according to civil rights attorney Cheryl Ifill, who was quoted in the Common Dreams article, these folks are not going to be charged with the crime, but that's not really the point. The point is to make an example out of them, and that's why they were arrested, right? That's why this election unit was supposed to go after them. Now, six of the people who were previously convicted for sex crimes, these folks already had prosecutors not bring charges against them, because again, they didn't meet the standard set out by Florida law that you have to knowingly commit a crime to be charged for it. So these folks, they didn't know that they were eligible. In some instances, they were encouraged to register to vote after a minute and for a past because they thought that they could vote because they learned that felons could vote, not knowing about the restrictions and the further restrictions passed by Florida's legislature. And now there's this situation where people, a small amount but still enough people are getting arrested for voting when they thought they were voting laterally. And that's just so wrong because we all know this is being done specifically to prove a point. This is being done so Ron DeSantis can flex and prove to people that he's tough, unconvicted criminals. Now, Republicans in Florida have been working to undermine Amendment 4 by trying to water it down, and it's just, it's to be expected, right? Voters, they make their voices heard loud and clear by passing Amendment 4 overwhelmingly or approving Amendment 4 overwhelmingly, and Republicans try to undermine democracy. So, yeah, this isn't necessarily that surprising, but to see what this voter election fraud unit looks like in practice, it's pretty gross because we know why DeSantis is doing this and it's just it's so immoral, but yet that's not going to stop him.