ST. LUCIE COUNTY, FL—Although the Florida Department of Law Enforcement kicked off a months-long investigation into St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson for posting a picture of his pro-Trump ballot on social media, State Attorney Phil Archer has declined to prosecute, he announced Thursday, because "ballot selfies" are legal.
"There is no reasonable likelihood of Pearson's successful conviction on any resulting charges because our prosecution will not survive constitutional attack," Archer, the State Attorney for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, wrote to FDLE Agent Ryan Bliss, the head of the Pearson investigation.
Archer continued, citing three federal cases in Indiana, Colorado, and New Hampshire in which posted photos of completed ballots were found to be legal, and a 2016 article entitled "Why Ballot Selfies are Protected by the First Amendment."
The answer? Because the law prohibiting electors from showing their ballots was designed to prevent intimidation and vote-buying, but that practice is "so rare that it is considered to be statistically non-existent," Archer wrote. He thanked FDLE for following the law and conducting an investigation but stressed that this so-called violation would not hold up in court.
Archer's words follow Pearson—a DeSantis appointee instituted after the last Sheriff, Ken Mascara, suddenly stepped down—choosing to post a March 19th picture of his vote for Donald Trump in the Presidential Preference Primary. After whisperings of an internal investigation, DeSantis confirmed it on June 4th via an executive order release: Pearson was under fire for a potential election law violation—a $1,000 misdemeanor penalty.
This latest legal snafu is only one of many in the Republican primary for St. Lucie County Sheriff: Pearson's opponent, Chief of Police Richard Del Toro, was recently accused—then cleared—of a Hatch Act violation and is now being sued for defamation after calling Pearson's pardoned friend a felon. Pearson, meanwhile, was the subject of a 2020 FDLE investigation into allegations of election fraud, in which he was accused of facilitating a ghost candidate to help the Democrat incumbent.
Charges were never filed.
Pearson and Del Toro will face off against Preston Michael DiFrancesco, a former corrections officer, on August 20th in what TC Palm reported to be the most expensive local race in county history. The winner will face the sole Democrat candidate, former Deputy Sheriff Steven Giordano, on November 5th.
