Florida Releases Full List of 20 Charged in Statewide Voter Fraud Sweep as Some Cases Draw Questions

Nearly seven weeks after Attorney General James Uthmeier and Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a statewide voter fraud sweep, the attorney general's office has released the full list of all 20 people charged, and reporting on several of the cases is raising questions about how the state built them. When the operation was announced in September, Uthmeier's office named only 12 of the defendants. After repeated requests, a spokesperson sent the complete list to WPTV investigative reporter Katie LaGrone this week.

The list shows the defendants are spread across 13 Florida counties. According to the attorney general's office, 16 are noncitizens and four are people with felony convictions, and all were ineligible to vote when they are accused of casting ballots. None has been convicted, and each is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.

What the state announced in September

Uthmeier and DeSantis unveiled the operation on Thursday, Sept. 24, at an event at Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach County, about six weeks before the Nov. 3 general election and as mail ballots were beginning to go out. Uthmeier said at the time that 12 of the 20 defendants were already in custody.

According to the attorney general's office, the 16 noncitizens are accused of registering by falsely claiming United States citizenship before voting, and the four people with felony records are accused of registering and voting while still on probation. The state said the investigations began with referrals from the Florida Department of State's Office of Election Crimes and county supervisors of elections after immigration status reviews, including checks of federal databases, flagged registered voters who were not citizens.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators then gathered voter registration applications, poll book signatures and vote-by-mail certificates, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services helped confirm noncitizen status, the office said. The Office of Statewide Prosecution is handling the cases.

Each charged offense is a third-degree felony. If convicted as charged, most of the defendants face up to 10 years in state prison, according to the attorney general's office, because many face more than one count. Uthmeier told anyone thinking of cheating at the September event that "we're going to get you", and DeSantis said the state has "zero tolerance for voter fraud." Statewide Prosecutor Brad McVay said a law that is not enforced "doesn't mean a whole lot."

Where the cases are

WPTV reported that the 20 defendants come from Brevard, Collier, Columbia, DeSoto, Duval, Hendry, Hillsborough, Lee, Marion, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, Pinellas and Polk counties. The county counts reported so far by WPTV and the News Service of Florida break down as follows.

The cases described by the state

The charging summaries the state released in September for Southwest Florida defendants give a sense of the cases. The five Southwest Florida cases involve lawful permanent residents, people with green cards, who the state says falsely affirmed they were citizens when registering and then voted in 2024. Several later signed a citizenship acknowledgment form admitting they were not citizens, according to the state. Most are charged with unqualified noncitizen electors willfully voting and false swearing.

One DeSoto County defendant, a Canadian national who the state said has been a lawful permanent resident since 1967, is accused of registering through the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles in 2021 and voting by mail in both the 2024 primary and general elections. According to the state, after he received a noncitizen notice he emailed the supervisor of elections acknowledging he is a permanent resident and that he had been voting. He faces two counts of each charge and up to 20 years if convicted as charged.

Another Collier County defendant, a Canadian national and permanent resident since 1991, is accused of registering in September 2024 and voting early that October, the state said.

Questions about the charges

The most significant issue LaGrone has found involves the law itself. In the case of Astrid Quintana, a Fort Myers woman charged with willfully voting and false swearing, and in at least seven other noncitizen cases, the state cites a law that did not exist at the time the defendants are accused of voting, WPTV reported. According to the state's own summary, Quintana voted in person on Nov. 5, 2024.

Tampa Bay 28, WPTV's sister station, has reported that the newer statute cited in the cases does not include the same requirement that a defendant knew he or she was ineligible that appeared in the older law. In response to LaGrone's findings, a spokesperson for the attorney general said those investigations are still pending.

Quintana is a lawful permanent resident who has lived in the United States since she was a toddler and is married to a U.S. veteran, according to WPTV. Her attorney, Connor Martin, said she received a voter identification card before voting in 2024 and believed she was allowed to vote. Asked how the state could charge her under a law that did not exist at the time, Martin replied, "Well, they cannot."

Questions also surround at least one felony case. Donta White of Tampa is on probation for grand theft, which makes him ineligible to vote. The state says he admitted registering to vote twice and voting early in 2024, and he faces up to 15 years if convicted as charged. His attorney, Lynley Flagler, said White was also sent a voter ID card. She told WPTV she sees "an entrapment issue," arguing the state prosecutes illegal voting without putting checks in place to tell people when they can and cannot vote.

Criticism of the timing

The September announcement drew immediate criticism from voting rights advocates. Brad Ashwell, state director of All Voting is Local Florida, said DeSantis and his allies were publicizing the charges right before a major election and warned the move could intimidate Black and Brown voters. He called it "political theater" and compared it to the arrests announced ahead of the 2022 midterms. Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell also questioned the timing, according to the Florida Phoenix.

Uthmeier said at the event that more than 100 people have been arrested for voter fraud in Florida since the Office of Election Crimes was created in 2022, and his office said more than half of those prosecutions began after he took office.

The Florida sweep came the same week the Trump administration reported that its national effort to find noncitizens on state voter rolls had produced about 1,600 voter fraud cases and 160 arrests, WLRN reported. Election experts note those numbers are a tiny fraction of the country's more than 211 million active registered voters and say noncitizen voting is rare.

What's next

The attorney general's office has said the investigation remains active and that additional charges and arrests are expected. The 20 cases will proceed through the courts, where defense attorneys are expected to challenge the charges that rely on the newer statute. The attorney general's office has not publicly explained why those cases cite a law enacted after the alleged votes, beyond saying the investigations are pending.

DeSantis also used the September event to announce a new national group, the Association of State and Local Election Officials, to promote Florida's election laws in other states. It is to be led by Secretary of State Cord Byrd and was set to begin after the Nov. 3 general election.