Convicted felons who served their time, registered to vote and cast ballots in the 2020 election in Florida are still waiting to learn whether they will be punished for what they have called an honest mistake.
The alleged illegal voters said they thought they had their rights restored in 2018 when Florida passed an amendment clearing the way for them to participate in primaries and general elections. But the amendment did not apply to people with convictions for murders or sex offenses.
The Florida Supreme Court is being asked to intervene in a handful of cases, one in Broward County, where defendants successfully argued that the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor does not have the right to bring charges because the offenses involved acts committed only in one county.
That was the argument Broward Circuit Judge George Odom invoked in late 2022 when he dismissed the case against Terry Hubbard, 66, who had served 12 years for sexual battery in the late 1980s and through the 1990s.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal reinstated the case over the summer, and now Hubbard — who registered to vote in 2019, received a registration card and cast a ballot in 2020 — is facing the possibility of heading back to prison.
Hubbard was not alone; 20 convicted felons who finished serving their time were arrested in the summer of 2022 across the state. Most argued in court proceedings and filings that they assumed the 2018 amendment applied to them and thought their voter registration cards confirmed that belief.
But allegations of widespread fraud after the 2020 election prompted the governor to create an election integrity office, which uncovered the improperly issued voter registration cards.
The Office of the Statewide Prosecutor filed charges in Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Orange and Hillsborough counties.
Most of those cases have been resolved. But five similar cases, including Hubbard’s, are waiting to be tried if the Florida Supreme Court sides with the state, which argued that each case involves a defendant who registered to vote in one county and had their applications processed in another. In addition, the state argued, the voters cast ballots that included statewide races, not just races in their home counties.
““By law, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections was required to transmit information from his voter-registration form to the secretary of state in Leon County, which then reviewed that information in Leon. Only then could Hubbard successfully vote in Broward,” the Florida Attorney General’s Office wrote in a brief filed last month with the Florida Supreme Court, which is weighing Hubbard’s closely watched case.
None of the allegations suggest voter fraud on a scale that could have tipped the 2020 election in Florida, which Donald Trump won by nearly 400,000 votes, or the 2022 election, which DeSantis won by 1.5 million votes and fellow Republican Marco Rubio won by 1.3 million.
Information from the News Service of Florida was used in this report.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. Follow him on Threads.net/@rafael.olmeda