This is why Ron DeSantis is so frightening. While Donald Trump planned to claim the election was rigged, put fake electors in place, and strong-arm his Vice-President into sending the election to the House of Representatives, Ron DeSantis may simply avoid the entire issue up front by creating his own police force for elections and appoints its leader, this despite the fact that there’s no indication of any criminality in Florida’s elections beyond people having been caught voting twice. Democrats see trouble looming, big trouble. After all, where do you think DeSantis’s election enforcement team will “pre-place” its assets on election day?

From Florida Playbook:

It still remains unclear how much work — and how many investigations of voter fraud and other election law violations — the state’s newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security will actually undertake during this year’s midterm elections.

The vaguer the job description, the more dangerous it is.

After all, the office touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t get signed into law until late April and its funding only officially kicked in a week ago. But DeSantis — and Secretary of State Cord Byrd — have found a familiar face to take over the politically sensitive job of running the office: Pete Antonacci.

Appoint a loyalist, not someone with impeccable independence.

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Democrats, such as Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, are more suspicious of Antonacci’s hiring, calling it absurd and labeling him a “Federalist Society” darling. Democrats remain deeply distrustful of the need for the office itself, given the lack of widespread instances of fraud.

There was no stated need for this office.

Democrats remain rightly and deeply distrustful of Ron DeSantis with good reason. DeSantis sees himself as president in January 2025 but to get there, DeSantis will be forced to win this November in Florida and he will have to thread a needle between appeasing the pro-choice state while remaining a viable MAGA presidential candidate.

But the larger point, again, is that while Donald Trump had every “inclination” required to bring about fascism, Ron DeSantis quietly goes about getting it done, brick by brick, well ahead of time, all with a, “Who, me?” look when it is called out. It is possible that independent women will vote in huge numbers this November and Charlie Crist beats DeSantis, perhaps by less than one percent.

Is there any scenario by which Ron DeSantis’s election security team doesn’t suddenly play a role when Crist is up by only .2%?  The arrest of a poll worker (in urban Miami or Tampa, obviously) for “mishandling” thousands of ballots? There is nothing in DeSantis’s history that says, “No.”  And there is nothing in Florida, neither the election security team, the Florida legislature or Supreme Court to stand in his way of using it.

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Ron DeSantis is meticulous in ensuring that he doesn’t have to resort to Trump’s techniques and that requires both intense observation and pushback ahead of time, ahead of 2022 and 2024.


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