Renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump has joined the legal team defending a Florida 69-year-old woman arrested at 3 a.m. for alleged voter fraud.
Tallahassee resident Marsha Ervin was asleep when the Tallahassee Police Department came to arrest her on Sept. 29. Ervin, a Black woman on probation for a felony conviction, says she thought she was eligible to vote.
She’s the latest Floridian and the first Leon County resident to get arrested following apparent confusion over voter eligibility.
Local NAACP president Mutaqee Akbar, also her attorney, has criticized the early hour of the arrest, done as if “she was a hardened criminal… [like] somebody who might be aggressive,” he said. Tallahassee Police Department spokesperson Alicia Hill said the timing was the result of an officer “proactively searching for wanted people.”
Crump will join NAACP leaders and community officials during a Tuesday afternoon press conference in Tallahassee to demand charges be dropped and “demand clarity in Florida voter eligibility laws,” according to a Monday evening press release.
The Tallahassee Branch of the NAACP is urging the state to create a checkbox for Floridians previously convicted of felonies seeking voter registration, according to the release. It’d allow for additional eligibility verification without possible legal consequences in case of errors, putting onus on the state to confirm voter status.
Charge: Voter fraud. Arrest: 3 a.m.A 69-year-old Floridian thought she was eligible to vote. Then police came knocking at 3 a.m.
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About Ervin, and others
When police came knocking, it had been a year since Ervin spoke to an investigator from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which issued the warrant for her arrest.
Those records say FDLE investigated after receiving information from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recently-created Office of Election Crimes and Security, which investigates voter fraud allegations.
A police report timed her arrest at 2:49 a.m. Friday.
Attorney Akbar said law enforcement on Friday morning was “polite” to Ervin. Still, it came as a shock.
“She had been on probation for almost the complete [five years], no problems, no issues, about to get off,” said Akbar, who is also the president of the NAACP’s Tallahassee branch. “[Police] knocked on her door, she let them in, they explained they had warrants out for her arrest. She had no idea.”
Information from a Leon County Supervisors of Elections public records request showed Ervin had initially registered to vote in the area in 2002 but was removed from the rolls in 2017 because of a felony conviction the year before for aggravated neglect of an elderly person.
Ervin was released from prison in 2018, put on a probation that doesn’t end until next month. And, until that probation ends, she’s not eligible to vote.
Despite that, court records say she registered to vote in 2020 as a Democrat. The government gave her a voter registration card. She proceeded to cast a ballot in that year’s general election and the 2022 primary election.
She told the FDLE investigator she believed she could because “she was told she could when she was released from prison” and local TV news stories that “indicated felons could vote.” An investigator obtained documents from the Florida Department of Corrections showing that she wasn’t provided any information by the prison indicating whether she could or couldn’t vote.
“[Ervin said] she would not have voted if she believed it was against the law because she just got out of prison and had begun probation,” records say.
Amendment 4
In 2018, voters approved Amendment 4, which aimed to restore voting rights to 1.4 million people barred because of past felony convictions, with the exception of murder or sexual offenses.
Months later, the Legislature passed a bill signed into law by DeSantis to keep hundreds of thousands of felons from becoming eligible to vote until they met all their past legal financial obligations.
Years later, the organization that spearheaded the Amendment 4 campaign accuses the state of working against the resultant rights restoration and failing to help voters determine eligibility. The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition filed a federal lawsuit over the summer.
Just like it never allowed those with felony murder and sex offenses, the amendment never allowed those to vote before completing their felony probation. Still, people are confused about how the laws apply to them.
And, under Florida statute, the onus is on the voter to get it right. Voter fraud is a felony offense.
Soon after, the Tampa Bay Times got footage of some of the arrests.
One man, handcuffed, asked: “Voter fraud? Y’all said anybody with a felony could vote, man.”
“Voter fraud?” One woman said to an arresting officer. “I voted, but I ain’t commit no fraud.”
Voting rights advocates say the arrests scared many eligible voters from the polls — especially those with prior convictions and in communities of color.
In addition to Ervin’s case, other arrests have been made this year in Florida. For example, Toye La Rocca, 63, of Fort Walton Beach was arrested for voting while still on probation. She told investigators she voted because she was confused, according to her arrest warrant. She pointed to how she had been issued a voter registration card.
And, despite the displayed confusion from those arrested, the governor’s office told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida months ago that Florida does not criminally pursue voter fraud cases in which “only a voter’s confusion about Amendment 4 led to a violation of law.” The office has not answered questions since about what exactly that means.
State’s response
State Attorney Jack Campbell, whose 2nd Judicial Circuit office is handling Ervin’s case, said local prosecutors had declined to take up voter fraud cases in the past.
“Each case is decided based on facts and the law,” he said. “The law concerning elections is both new and has been very confused, and we are taking that into consideration each time we review [a case].'”
He declined to get into specifics of Ervin’s case, saying he didn’t want to say something to the media that could influence a jury down the line.
“She’s entitled to a fair trial,” Campbell said.
The governor’s office did not respond to a media request about the arrest. Yet, Deputy Press Secretary Alex Lanfranconi wrote a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, criticizing a USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida story about it.
“I’m sorry her sleep was disturbed,” he said, including a screenshot of a story about her charges. “She served time for neglecting her own mother in horrific conditions. Then after prison she voted illegally.”
Ervin told police that she was the primary caretaker for her mother, 86-year-old mother Gloria Bourgeois, but that Bourgeois refused to see a doctor due to her religious beliefs.
“We don’t believe in medicine,” Ervin told an officer. “Our religion says God will fix it.”
Bourgeois had rotting flesh and numerous ulcers including one the size of a basketball, court documents said. It wasn’t until Bourgeois started bleeding from her ulcers that Leon County Emergency Medical Services was called, and she died weeks later, in 2015.
After publication, Florida Department of State spokesperson Mark Ard sent the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida an email reiterating that it’s the responsibility of the voter to be in compliance with state law.
“As far as Ervin’s confusion about her eligibility to vote, an individual in the middle of serving a Florida felony probationary sentence very clearly has not completed the terms of his or her sentence,” Ard said.
He pointed to documents she signed, like the voter registration application, which requires an affirmation of eligibility.
He also mentioned how prospective voters can contact the state Division of Elections and request an advisory opinion. That process has faced criticism from voting rights advocates and some elections officials, who say it’s cumbersome and not well-used.
Dana Kelly, spokesperson for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said its Election Crime Unit, which was established last summer, had received more than 1,000 voting violation-related referrals from the Florida Department of State, Office of Election Crimes and Security and other sources.
Those referrals include allegations of those voting without eligibility, as well as accusations of initiative petition fraud and voting in multiple states.
“To date, the noted referrals have resulted in the felony arrests of 31 individuals from Escambia, Leon, Orange, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties,” Kelly said in an email.
In an email, FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger emphasized that the department “has no control over when or how a warrant is served.”
This story will be updated after the 2:30 p.m. press conference.
This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule is based in Tallahassee, Fla. He can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com. Twitter: @DouglasSoule.