THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — A fourth resident of a massive Florida retirement community has been arrested on a charge of voter fraud.

Charles Barnes, 64, was arrested Tuesday and charged with voter fraud for casting more than one ballot, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court.

The arrest affidavit doesn’t detail the basis for the charge. Barnes entered a not guilty plea on Thursday.

His attorney, Victor Mead, didn’t immediately return an email inquiry.

Online voting records showed Barnes wasn’t affiliated with any political party and that he first registered to vote in Sumter County in 2019.

Barnes’ arrest was the fourth for voter fraud in the past two months of residents of The Villages retirement community in a county that is a Republican stronghold in Florida. Of the three other residents, two were registered Republicans and the third had no party affiliation.

The arrests come after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged to create a law enforcement agency to investigate election crimes, despite there being little evidence of electoral malfeasance by voters in the Sunshine State.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FNN) – Many of the legislative committees are meeting in preparation for the upcoming legislative session on March 2, 2021.

The Public Integrity and Elections Committee met on February 9, 2021, to discuss whether or not Florida’s laws are working to produce secure, reliable, fair, and efficient elections. The presentations during this meeting were intended:

• Give the members of the committee an opportunity to learn more about the nuances of election law
• To appreciate what went right in the 2020 election
• To evaluate areas where there might be room for improvement

Secretary of State Laurel Lee talked about the physical and cybersecurity of the elections, with her main focus being on infrastructure.

On May 22, 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis instructed Secretary Lee to do a review of the statewide elections infrastructure to identify any vulnerabilities and address any vulnerabilities that were identified not only at the state level but across all 67 counties.

To create a baseline, the Department of State needed reliable information and the same information across all counties. The Department developed a plan along with the Supervisors of Elections from across the state. This plan involved sending Department of State cyber navigators to each of the 67 counties to conduct an election specific risk assessment on the individual networks.

This meant for the first time ever, the State Department had statewide visibility on the elections related systems, networks, and physical facilities. They were then able to send resources and personnel to the areas most in need and to work side-by-side with each county to address and mitigate any vulnerabilities.

Secretary Lee said that with the help of our federal partners, which included the US Attorney, FBI, and Homeland Security all critical intelligence and threat information was passed along in a timely manner and these partners helped in the fight against election-related misinformation.

Another new thing for this election was that the state joined the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in order to enhance election security and maintain accurate voter rolls. Membership in ERIC allowed the state and the Supervisors of Elections to cross-check their rolls with those of all other member states to find deceased voters, duplicate registrations, or other list maintenance activities in order to maintain more accurate and up-to-date rolls.

The State Department also used ERIC to conduct the state’s most sweeping effort to date to register new voters. 2.2 billion postcards were sent out to potential voters. Within 10 days of the households starting to receive those postcards, the state saw 300,000 new registrations with a total of 14.4 million registered voters this year which is an increase of 1.4 million.

Secretary Lee applauded Judge Pete Antonacci, former Supervisor of Elections in Broward County for his and his team’s work on correcting the many problems plaguing Broward County elections. She said that in 2020, Broward County was truly a success story.

When asked by the committee about the breakdown in the online voter registration site this year and in past years, Secretary Lee said that her office had made improvements to the system but they were only expecting to handle 100,000’s of thousands of new registrations on the last night of registration but instead they had millions of voters trying to register. Her office immediately began to upgrade the system and she extended the deadline for another 24 hours, giving voters time to register online. Secretary Lee said that improvements have been made to the programming as well as the system capacity so that the online registration system now will be able to handle huge numbers of voters who may try to register online.

Judge Antonacci offered his observations to the committee from his time as Elections Supervisor. Judge Antonacci said that his biggest concern is with mail-in ballots. Broward County received 475,000 mail-in ballots over a 32-day period in the 2020 election. He said that verifying signatures is definitely an area that needs improvement. Antonacci also said that vote by mail request lists are available to certain political entities which makes ballot harvesting possible because these entities can now show up at a voter’s home and this should be addressed by the legislature.

Judge Antonacci also said that he was concerned about the people who came to the dropbox sites and deposited large numbers of mail-in ballots. He feels that there should be a limit to the number of ballots that are allowed to be dropped off by one person.

Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley disagreed with this observation by pointing out that because of the pandemic, many neighborhoods had one person designated to pick up all the mail-in ballots for the neighborhood and drop them off at a dropbox location. He also said that he knew of many families in his county that did the same thing.

The committee appeared to have their concerns and questions addressed. There were a few questions posed to Secretary Lee that she did not have the answer to but she promised to get those answers for the committee.

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Lynn DeJarnette is a reporter for Florida National News. | info@floridanationalnews.com

ORLANDO, Fla. (FNN) – For a two-bedroom apartment in Orange County, Florida, residents are looking at an average monthly rent of $1,190, which requires the average worker to make at least $22 per hour, or $47,600 in order to adequately afford their apartment. The median per capita income in Orange County was roughly $30,500 from 2015-2019 with a 12.6% poverty rate. Research conducted by the Federal Reserve suggests that 40% of Americans are unable to afford a $400 emergency and 22% were already expecting to default on their payments. Yes, this is all happening in the world’s wealthiest nation.

The figures discussed previously do not factor in the unprecedented increase in unemployment and the looming debt crisis hovering over America amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While some developed countries governments offered to pay at least 75% of their workers’ salaries to relieve both businesses and workers, Republican officials in the United States do not want to spend a single dime helping workers while they spend hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to overthrow 7 million votes in the most recent election.

In the middle of a segment in late October on CNBC, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said, “I think the price of not doing something is even higher. So as long as [the stimulus package is] limited in some way, as long as it’s not crazy, yes I’m willing to be flexible about it because I think it’s that important.” The irony is that Sen. Rubio has advocated for far “crazier” policies in the past than $2,000 payments to American workers during a financial crisis, including raising the nation’s deficit-filled defense budget to $1T.

During the beginning of the pandemic, leading senate Democrats, including Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and now Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris of California, cosigned the Economic Crisis Support Act, which would provide monthly checks of $2,000 to Americans amid the economic downturn. Since then, there have been multiple variations of the stimulus plan, including the Emergency Money for the People Act, which would add $2,000 monthly payments to the federal unemployment benefits covered under the CARES Act, which has expired since the end of July. Such a plan would only work to boost the economy by increasing government spending and increasing the amount of money families are spending, circulating money around the economy. Republicans rejected both proposals, plus many more.

Corporate Socialism

While Republican politicians are off campaigning on their ability to capitalize on the irrational fears of socialism and the oxymoron “radical liberalism,” hundreds of thousands of Americans have died under their lack of leadership and millions of Americans have experienced the woes of a deadly virus. The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump downplayed such a virus and lied to the American people about how to prevent the rapid spread of the virus. After his continuous mishandling of the virus, Trump still does not have a plan. Instead, this president is using his fundraising ability to make hundreds of millions of dollars that are virtually unregulated. Right behind him are the same party leaders that could barely agree to pass a $600 check on Sunday.

One-time checks of $1,200 was already a major compromise for Democrats and now they have to agree to an almost pathetic $600. The reason why such a major compromise was made when it comes to providing relief to American families was because Republicans did not want to provide relief to families, they wanted to provide relief to corporations. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell alongside other rank and file Republicans have continuously called for five-year liability protection, meaning corporations that have mistreated workers or did not take the proper safety precautions during the pandemic cannot be sued by workers. Democrats categorically refused.

It is relatively easy to pass off aid to American families as “socialism” during a deadly pandemic when your whole career was built on corporate donations like Mitch McConnell’s. It is easy to tell American families that cutting red tape is good when you represent one of the nation’s most impoverished states; yet own a $600,000 pad in that state alongside an estimated $2.15 million townhouse in the nations’ capital, like Mitch McConnell. Republicans do not like socialism for the American people, they only like socialism for themselves and large corporations.

While this stimulus plan is disappointing, it is not all negative, especially since Republicans did not get their way on corporate immunity. Thanks to Democrats in the house and senate, this stimulus provides $600 to adults plus an extra $600 per child. The bill invests over $200 billion in the Paycheck Protection Program, small business loans and funds for loans written out by small and minority-owned lenders. The bill also extends some programs from the CARES Act and provides a supplemental $300 weekly to those who are unemployed.

It is time for Democrats, especially progressives, to turn out more than ever before to stop Republicans from obstructing anymore progress. This pandemic made it abundantly clear that Republicans are in it for themselves and S&P 500 CEOs. For now, state and local leaders must work together to take care and provide for their communities, especially in Florida, where corporate Republicans preside over every level of the government.

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Supervisor Nathaniel Douglas made history during the 2020 election as the youngest person elected to the Orange Soil & Water Conservation District Board of Supervisors, winning Seat 1. He is a Florida National News contributor.