DeSantis ready to stop imaginary voter fraud, coverup real fraud.

Frank Cerabino, known for his humorous columns, is also a cogent journalist when it comes to documenting Florida Republicans' relentlessly corrupt culture. During Florida's current legislative session, DeSantis wants legislation to establish and fund an "election crime" office. The governor claims he needs a 52-person unit, including 45 investigators, to root out election fraud in the state. He’s also proposing to hire six state prosecutors to handle nothing but election-crime cases. This sounds more than a little bit excessive in a state where the last election saw 18 million votes cast and a total of 75 complaints sent from the Secretary of State to local prosecutors.

So let’s say that there were three Florida Senate races in 2020 that featured ghost candidates who weren’t really running for the office, but just secretly financed by GOP operatives to confuse voters and help party candidates in those races.

And let’s say to make this work, some shady things had to happen. Bribes needed to be made. And shady campaign donations from undisclosed sources — maybe from deep corporate pockets — had to put up about $550,000 to pay for it all

And in Miami-Dade County, the part of the state where the local prosecutor was a Democrat, this ghost-candidate scheme was investigated, charges were filed and the $45,000 bribe was exposed. But in Seminole County, the part of the state where the local prosecutor was a Republican, that same election-fraud scheme has been ignored.

Now if DeSantis had his statewide election crime unit already in place, he could have quickly stepped in to take over the Miami-Dade investigation, ensuring that no charges would have been filed. Or he could have jumped into Seminole County to make sure that his own party was punished for its misdeeds there.