Tampa Bay Times/Tampa Police Department/Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office
One of the 20 Floridians arrested this summer for allegedly voting illegally in the 2020 election had his charges dropped by prosecutors on Tuesday, dealing yet another blow to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ increasingly shaky crusade against voter fraud in the state. Tony Patterson, 44, won’t be prosecuted because of “information received” from a supervisor of elections office in Tampa, and because he was already facing a prison sentence for a separate crime, reported the Miami Herald. Patterson was previously captured on body-cam footage appearing distraught and confused during his August arrest. “I thought felons were able to vote,” he said. “Why would you let me vote if I wasn’t able to vote?” The Tampa man is now the second of the 20 arrestees—mostly felons who were unaware they couldn’t vote and had even been issued voter ID cards—to not be prosecuted after a Miami judge threw out a case against 56-year-old Robert Lee Wood last month.
