The mood was grim on Defend Florida’s mid-November Zoom call.
Members of the Sarasota-founded election conspiracy theory group traded frustrations over Florida Republicans who no longer seemed interested in their proposals to tighten Florida’s voting rules.
“We’re getting heavy resistance,” said Deborah Monks, a volunteer member, during the call.
It was a far cry from their rise in the years after the 2020 election, when Defend Florida had cultivated relationships with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, meeting regularly with his staff while they created Florida’s controversial Office of Election Crimes and Security. But its influence in Tallahassee has faded: Republican lawmakers have pushed the group aside, calling its brand tarnished.
“I guess that's the definition of losing political clout,” committee chair Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, told Suncoast Searchlight after the meeting. “In politics, winners win and losers lose.”
It’s a phenomenon that Defend Florida members have begun referring to as the “brick wall.”
But while its clout in Tallahassee has faded, the group itself has not.
Even as local lawmakers distance themselves, Defend Florida and the loose network of influencers and content creators surrounding it have sought to grow their influence at the grassroots. They have transformed from a state-focused pressure group into a national effort coordinating with activists questioning election security across the U.S. Their leadership has routinely hosted calls drawing tens of thousands of listeners and featuring high-profile election deniers like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and recently pardoned Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.
The message political operators like these spread — that elections are corrupt — still threatens public trust, election officials warn.
Misinformation and disinformation remain “a major problem,” said Wendy Sartory Link, president of the nonpartisan Florida Supervisors of Elections (FSE) and the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections. “Misinformation is generally juicier, so it spreads faster than the truth. And what that does is then leaves voters very confused, then they get discouraged about participating.”
David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, which works closely with election officials across the country, warned that the problem could escalate ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“Disinformation is incredibly resilient,” said Becker. “Part of the reason for that is there are some very powerful amplifiers of election lies, including the president of the United States.”
Which helps explain where these activists are now placing their bets. President Donald Trump’s false claims about fraudulent voting during and after the 2020 election helped launch groups like their own, and its members hope he can resurrect their relevance — even as he publicly has praised Florida's elections as secure.
“Hopefully we can get engagement from the president’s team,” said Monks, referring to the Trump administration. “Otherwise we’re dead in the water.”
Stopping the Steal
Founded in 2021 by a pair of Trump supporters based in Sarasota and Manatee counties — Raj Doraisamy and Caroline Wetherington — Defend Florida was born in heady days for the far right on the Suncoast.
“Medical freedom” activists who advocated disproven COVID-19 treatments like the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were gearing up to mount campaigns to seize seats on the elected Sarasota Memorial Hospital board, and Proud Boys-aligned organizers were helping flip control of the Sarasota School Board to conservatives. A private hangout in south Sarasota called “The Hollow” opened its doors, and gun range, to right-wing activists — with Trump’s former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn establishing himself as a regular presence there.
Doraisamy, a Sarasota County MAGA fan, elevated his profile with connections to political operators like Roger Stone. Wetherington, who ran a statewide group called Women for Trump, had already raised a volunteer army once. Together, they started Defend Florida, which Doraisamy said is neither a nonprofit nor a business — but “a website and a movement.”
For individuals who sought to overturn the 2020 election, or sincerely believed Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, the group became an organizing hub.
It didn’t matter that voter fraud is exceptionally rare, or that efforts to unearth and prosecute such cases have yielded few results. An Associated Press review of the swing states after the 2020 election found fewer than 500 potentially fraudulent ballots cast — most of which were not even counted.
“Voter fraud is actually infinitesimal in the United States,” said Vilia Johnson, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Sarasota County. “So the whole conversation is a distraction, in my opinion.”
Still, that conversation grabbed the attention of one of the most powerful men in the state as he was gearing up for a 2024 presidential run.
DeSantis walked a shaky tightrope on the topic at the time, both affirming Florida’s election process but publicly floating the idea that swing state legislators could maneuver to change the national election outcome.
In March 2022, his office invited Defend Florida activists into the fold, taking numerous meetings with the group while crafting the state’s controversial Office of Election Crimes and Security, a new law enforcement program seeking to investigate and prosecute voter fraud.
Emails between DeSantis’ office and Defend Florida activists suggested a warm relationship: “We are so thankful for the passage of SB 524. Many of our members volunteered hundreds of hours to provide the data supporting the need for this legislation,” wrote a Defend Florida volunteer in a contemporaneous email exchange with the governor’s former director of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs that was obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
But when the new office launched its first high-profile crackdown in August 2022 — detaining 19 people who voted despite disqualifying felony convictions — the cases revealed confusion, not a conspiracy. Many of those arrested believed they were eligible under a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to people with felonies who had completed their sentences.
The arrests stoked fear among voters — but it did not unearth a pattern of fraud.
The “brick wall”
The landscape that catapulted Defend Florida into relevance has shifted since Trump’s decisive 2024 presidential victory.
“Since I've been involved, the climate has gotten more and more limited,” said Monks, the Defend Florida volunteer, describing her efforts to persuade state legislators to adopt restrictive voting measures this year on a call with Suncoast Searchlight. “The brick wall has gotten thicker.”
During a series of Zoom meetings, volunteers with Defend Florida bemoaned Republican officials they saw as uninterested in their claims about election security. The group had sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd in early November, requesting his support for, among other measures, legislation restricting mail voting and adding citizenship status markers to Florida driver’s licenses.
The activists said he did not write back. Suncoast Searchlight reached out to Byrd’s office for comment but did not receive one by publication.
“We’re having a hard time getting in front of legislators,” said Doraisamy, during a recent Defend Florida call.
Even when members do get the ear of lawmakers, the response is muted. At a Nov. 19 meeting of the state Senate committee on Ethics and Elections in Tallahassee, Defend Florida activists sat quietly in the back of the room as election officials chatted and joked with lawmakers while presenting proposals to help streamline the state’s election processes, according to a recorded video of the meeting.
Representatives of the Florida Supervisors of Elections requested that the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) automatically update election officials on changes to driver’s licenses; that the legislature clarify whether voting on a petition counts as voter “activity”; and requested increased penalties for tampering with voting equipment by classifying election equipment as critical infrastructure.
They also sought to expand access to mail-in voting by reinstating voters’ ability to check a box and opt in to vote by mail in the next election. The Republican-controlled state legislature shot down a similar proposal earlier this year.
Tacked onto the end of the committee meeting, four Defend Florida volunteers lined up to speak. They asked the legislators to require hand-counted audits of elections and adopt policies that Trump has promoted, including requiring passports or birth certificates to register to vote. None of the lawmakers assembled asked follow-up questions.
During the meeting, Gaetz also took a moment to laud Florida’s election system, noting that Trump had himself vouched for voting in Florida.
“Apparently there’s nothing wrong with voting in Florida if the president of the United States, who is very critical of voting practices elsewhere, voted and said it worked out well,” said Gaetz. “That should be a good message for all of those who wring their hands about voting in Florida.”
It’s not that Florida lawmakers have ignored the widespread anxieties about election security. Since 2020, they have passed a series of laws that election skeptics had advocated for — including a measure to deactivate vote-by-mail requests immediately after an election rather than letting voters opt in for an additional election.
The state also withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a national database that helps track voters who have moved out of the state where they are registered to vote, and which became a target for election skeptics.
“I do think the decision to pull out of the ERIC database is an example of a policy change stemming from disinformation which actually made Florida's voting system less secure than it previously was,” wrote Jessica Lowe-Minor, the president of League of Women Voters of Florida, in an email.
But even Gaetz, who earlier this year helped pass a measure imposing restrictions on the petition process to introduce citizen-led ballot measures, said the drumbeat of conspiracy theories from Defend Florida activists had cost the group politically.
“If you want me to vote for or against a piece of legislation based on your argument, it has to be evidence based,” said Gaetz. “There's some people who have theories or arguments about Florida elections that don't come with evidence. They come with opinion, and they come with volume, but they don't come with evidence.”
“Do you have Russ Vought’s phone number?”
Even as their influence wanes in Tallahassee, election skeptics see signs from Washington that Trump still has their backs.
Those signals include the president’s recent appointment of a high-profile conspiracy theorist — one who has promoted false claims about election security — to a role overseeing elections for the Department of Homeland Security. Closer to home, staffers from the Center for Renewing America, a think tank founded by Russell Vought, the powerful director of the Office of Management and Budget, appear at Defend Florida events.
During a Venice gathering hosted by Defend Florida in July, Vought’s group handed out literature alongside the right-wing Christian organization Citizens Defending Freedom.
On an October Zoom call hosted by Defend Florida, one participant put out an ambitious message to the Center for Renewing staffer on the call.
“Do you have Russ Vought's telephone number?” she wrote in the Zoom chat, which was published online and reviewed by Suncoast Searchlight. “I need to get in touch with him.”
No one responded to the inquiry.
But it illustrated how election-doubting activists, including those in Doraisamy’s group, view the Trump administration as a close and natural ally. Members of the organization have also claimed, publicly and during their Zoom meetings, to have worked with members of Trump’s executive order team.
Beyond working with Congress to pass a law, the president has no power to personally change election policies.
But Becker, the director of The Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he worries about how Trump’s administration could pressure states to change their processes.
“When we get to the point where Washington is trying to dictate [elections policy] to everybody, we’ve got a real problem,” said Becker, pointing to how the state of Ohio changed its vote-by-mail policy after the Department of Justice threatened legal action. “Especially when it’s very clear the White House doesn't understand how elections are run in the United States.”
And election deniers are seeking to push the White House to take up such interventions. On a late October call that Doraisamy hosted, that conviction was on full display.
Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader, joined the call and told the more than 20,000 viewers who tuned in on Rumble that grassroots election skeptics could sway Trump.
During the same call, Tarrio urged for the release from prison of Tina Peters, a former Colorado election clerk who was convicted and sentenced to nine years for overseeing a data breach while she was searching for voter fraud — a repeated refrain that election-denying activists have rallied around for months.
Within weeks, the federal Bureau of Prisons requested the Colorado Department of Corrections transfer Peters to state custody, setting up a standoff between Trump and the state of Colorado.
“I think,” said Tarrio, “the administration is on our side.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
Editor's note: Suncoast Searchlight reviewed its reporting process and says it does not use generative AI in its stories. If you have questions about their policies or content, contact Executive Editor-In-Chief Emily Le Coz at emily@suncoastsearchlight.org.
