DeSantis, Uthmeier announce arrests of 20 people in Florida for voter fraud

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier told reporters Thursday in Palm Beach County that state agents have arrested 20 people for voter fraud in Florida.

Sixteen of them, they said, were non-citizens who claimed U.S. citizenship and four others had felony convictions but registered and voted while still on probation.

The announcement came 40 days before the midterm elections.

Each charged offense is a third-degree felony. If convicted as charged, 18 of those arrested could face up to 10 years in a state prison. Two other defendants face slightly longer sentences.

“I view these election crimes as some of the most dangerous in our country. Because when you vote illegally, it cancels out the votes of others. It challenges our very American sovereignty,” said Uthmeier.

He added that more than 100 people have been arrested for voter fraud in Florida since the Office of Election Crimes was created to review alleged violations in 2022.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former senior trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, said he was troubled at the timing.

“It’s always been the practice of the DOJ that you do not bring these kinds of claims close to an election, because of the possibility that it could influence an election,” he said on a remote conference call with Florida reporters when asked about the expected announcement. “So, you wait until usually odd years, for instance — certainly not 40 days before an election — to bring these claims.”

Florida Democratic House Leader Fentrice Driskell echoed those sentiments.

“While we all want free and fair elections, I think the timing of this announcement reeks of voter intimidation, especially now that mail-in ballots are going out,” she said in a statement released after this story was initially posted. “The Governor talked about ‘showing some accountability’ to uphold election integrity. How about some accountability for state officials at the highest levels who abused 10 million of taxpayer dollars for political purposes? When will Floridians see some accountability for Hope Florida?   I am all for holding people who break the law responsible. Let’s make sure we are consistent.”

The DeSantis administration has done this before, however.

It was five days before the 2022 August primary elections when the governor held a press conference at the Broward County Courthouse to announce that 20 individuals were being arrested for voter fraud. Some of those charges were later dismissed.

The Trump administration earlier this week said its effort to find and prosecute noncitizens voting illegally had resulted in 160 arrests. As the Associated Press reported, that falls far short of the hundreds of thousands of noncitizen voters that President Donald Trump had previously suggested were on the rolls.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link said earlier Thursday that she had not been informed about the press conference. She did say that officials with the Office of Election Crimes regularly inquire about certain voters.

According to the Office of Election Crimes and Security’s 2025 annual report, the agency received more than 3,400 complaints last year but just 44 individuals were arrested “and/or” convicted of election-related crimes.

Brad McVay, the Florida statewide prosecutor, said the investigation took place over the past two months.  He said that 12 of the 20 people named were already in custody.

One of those individuals, Giorgio Dominique Mucelli, a Canadian citizen and lawful permanent resident, was charged with one count of voting by a non-citizen and one count of false affirmation. Uthmeier had announced that matter during a press conference in July.

McVay promised “many more arrests” for voter fraud in the future.

Proof of citizenship 

Florida lawmakers have passed legislation nearly every year since the 2020 presidential election to tighten state election laws. The latest bill, HB 991, requires proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote but will not go into effect until next year.

It is similar to federal legislation called the SAVE Act that passed the U.S. House but has stalled in the U.S. Senate, despite the protestations by Trump. That measure also would require voters to show identification at the polls, something that has been the law in Florida for decades.

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd used the press conference to announce that, after the November elections, he will leave his office to head a new national organization called the Association of State and Local Election Officials.

“We want to take the Florida blueprint, we want to take the model that has been so successful in the third largest state in the country and take it nationwide,” he said.

In DeSantis’ first year as governor, the state joined a national organization that shared voter election data with other states called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), but abruptly withdrew from the consortium in 2023. Florida was one of several mostly conservative-led states to withdraw on the same day Trump called on all Republican governors to leave the organization.