Civil rights leaders, advocacy groups join defense of Florida woman accused of voter fraud

Standing behind a podium and in front of the state attorney's office prosecuting her, 69-year-old Marsha Ervin held up the voter registration card the state gave her.

And arrested her for.

Less than two weeks before, Ervin had instead stood for a mugshot. Police knocked on her door just before 3 a.m. and arrested her for alleged voter fraud.

"When she woke up, she was completely surprised that they were telling her they had warrants for her arrest," said Tallahassee NAACP president Mutaqee Akbar, who's also Ervin's attorney.

"She was reliving a nightmare that she had lived five years ago, because she voted," said Akbar, who stood beside her at the beginning of a Tuesday afternoon press conference.

Ervin had been convicted of aggravated neglect of an elderly person in 2016 and released from prison in 2018. Her probation was supposed to end next month. Until then, she wasn't eligible to vote. But she did. Twice. Ervin says she thought she could.

Akbar and the group standing behind him called the arrest voter intimidation, pointing to all the other people arrested around the state following eligibility confusion. Most of them, like Ervin, are Black.

“For this to happen to her, what it really tells you [is] it can happen to any of us,” said renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who announced Monday evening that he was also representing Ervin. “This about instilling fear in people in our community, to say, 'Well, I don't want to get in any trouble, so I'm not going to come and vote.'

"Well, we have a news flash to all the enemies of equality: We will not give," he continued from the podium.

Akbar, Crump and Ervin were joined by local leaders as well as civil and voting rights organization representatives in the Leon County Courthouse.

They called for the state attorney's office behind them, headed by Jack Campbell, to drop the case.

"Ms. Ervin did not have the intent to commit an unlawful act," said Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor, who sent Campbell a letter earlier in the day. "I believe intent is an element here."

Those gathered also called on the state to fix the confusion instead of arresting people for it.

Ervin, a registered Democrat

Information from a Leon County Supervisors of Elections public records request shows Ervin had initially registered to vote in the area in 2002 but was removed from the rolls in 2017 because of the felony conviction.

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.

A year ago, she told a Florida Department of Law Enforcement 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." The 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.

Gov. Ron DeSantis' recently-created Office of Election Crimes and Security had referred Ervin's circumstance to the department, which issued the warrant for her arrest, which was executed in the early morning hours.

In an email, FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger emphasized that the department "has no control over when or how a warrant is served."

The Tallahassee Police Department made the arrest. Spokesperson Alicia Hill said the timing was the result of an officer "proactively searching for wanted people."

DeSantis' office responds

DeSantis' Deputy Press Secretary Alex Lanfranconi wrote a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, criticizing a USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida story about Ervin's arrest.

"I’m sorry her sleep was disturbed," he said, including a screenshot of an article 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.

Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis' press secretary, sidestepped questions about the fix proposed by attorneys and advocates and instead pointed to grisly details in the police report including how maggots were present on Bourgeois' body and chair.

"This a mere distraction trying to make us not focus on this being about voter intimidation," Crump said in an interview after the press conference. "We're talking about this issue. She wasn't arrested for those things. She was arrested for alleged voter fraud."

Akbar echoed that sentiment in a message to previously-incarcerated Floridians

"Don't be intimidated," Akbar said. "Even when our governor does what he just did and pulls the police report and tries to make her seem like the worst person ever, the state attorney's office gave her a sentence, she did her probation and she had no violations.

"They would rather go and try to distract instead of address the real issues here," he continued. "The fact they still don't have a response is troubling, and it's a signal of what their priorities are."

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.

DeSantis pressed on voter arrests:Bill Maher presses DeSantis on Black voter arrests, hours after one arrested in Tallahassee

Amendment 4 and the proposed fix

Many of the people behind the podium Tuesday have tried for years to get the state to do more to alleviate voter confusion.

Ervin is just the the latest Floridian — and the first Leon County resident — to get arrested following apparent confusion over voter eligibility.

Before the 2022 midterm election, DeSantis announced a batch of arrests of people who voted despite having previous murder or sexual offenses. Most of those arrested were Black, were issued voter registration cards and said they thought they were eligible to vote.

The confusion goes back to 2018, when voters approved Amendment 4, which aimed to restore voting rights to 1.4 million people barred because of past felony convictions.

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.

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.

But those gathered at the press conference Tuesday said the onus should be on the state.

On Tuesday, they urged the state to create a checkbox for Floridians previously convicted of felonies trying to get registration to vote. It would add additional eligibility verification without possible legal consequences in case of errors, they said.

They also called for the state to create a system for voters to easily be able to determine their eligibility.

"It's within the state's capacity to create this database," Proctor said, pointing to other databases the state maintains, like those for licenses. "To keep this intentionally murky and ambivalent and confusing... this is nothing but a literacy exam."

Campbell, whose 2nd Judicial Circuit office is handling Ervin's case, said in an interview last week that local prosecutors had declined to take up voter fraud cases in the past.

"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 said.

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.