ELECTION COMPLAINT NARRATIVE: SHERIFF ROBERT GUALTIERI

Florida Statute 99.095 permits any candidate seeking the elected office of Sheriff to “qualify” to be on a
Florida ballot for elected office by collecting the signature cards of at least 1% of the registered voters of
that county. Here in Pinellas, that count is 6,814 signatures. If any Pinellas candidate can collect the
required 6,814 VERIFIED signatures, the candidate is considered officially qualified.

The standard method for collecting signatures are by;

1. Petition drives where a candidate and any volunteers go door to door to collect signatures.
2. A candidate or their staff will collect signatures from a popular event or venue such as a sporting
event, fair, marketplace or any other place crowds of registered voter may converge in large numbers.
3. Pay a company or people to collect valid signatures on their behalf.
4. Approach people in person and in public and speak with them about signing the petition.

In order to effectively collect petition signatures, it requires a very specific form, personal information
from the person signing the form and a certain level of trust between the registered voter and the
person collecting the signature. Often, a long conversation must take place before a person is willing to
sign the petition.

However, on Apr 01, 2020, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he would sign an executive "safer-at-home"
order directing residents to "limit movements and personal interactions outside the home" to essential
services or activities.

On Apr 02, 2020 ABC Action News reported;

“CLEARWATER, Fla. — Pinellas County leaders are scrambling to make sense of the governor’s “safer-
at-home” order. County commissioners today voted unanimously to close down all non-essential
businesses to abide by the governor’s executive order. The order went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday
morning. The county's decision to close down the non-essential businesses comes as Gov. Ron
DeSantis made a change to his statewide "safer-at-home" order.

The problem is Pinellas County Commissioners don't yet know what exactly is considered essential
under the state order.

"But it just feels like they want to say 'Well, I never shut any businesses down,' said Commissioner
Charlie Justice. "It's semantics and it's language and we're in a too serious of a time for people to be
playing a game with language and that's what's so frustrating."

Based on their current interpretation of the state order, Pinellas County commissioners passed its own
order to close down all non-essential businesses. There's no wiggle room or concessions like curbside
pickup.”

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and the county administrator are working to get more answers from the
Governor’s office and to create a list of which businesses must shut down. Sheriff Gualtieri says
examples of the types of businesses he knows will not be considered essential are beauty supply
stores, clothing stores, lighting stores, bookstores, car washes, jewelry stores, museums and many
others.”

Governor Desantis specifically stated in a press conference that he “never shut down any business”
(Link) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAqNj6aGTWU Therefore, in Pinellas County, that “shut
down” was based solely on the actions of Sheriff Gualtieri and through his pressure and influence, the
Board of County Commissioners” which specifically stated in televised board meetings that they would
“defer to Sheriff Gualtieri’s decision” on what businesses to close or remain open.

Pinellas County Sheriff Robert Gualtieri was directly involved in every step of this shut down process and
his personal input was instrumental in making the decision to expand Governor Desantis’ orders to
“close down all non-essential businesses” leaving “no wiggle room or concessions like curbside pickup”.
Sheriff Gualtieri further initiated a show of force threatening to arrest anyone who violated these orders
to “stay at home” or conducted “non-essential activities” that were not on the list he helped create.
Sheriff Gualtieri followed through on those orders by personally arresting people who violated these
orders he helped to create.

Not on the list of “essential businesses” was any campaign activities, petition collection companies or
individuals who conducted these services, or any other method of action that would have permitted the
normal petition collection signature process.

Additionally, even if these persons or entities WERE permitted to go out and campaign and seek these
signatures, it was still illegal to be closer than 6 feet to anyone to be able to do so. Furthermore, all of
the typical venues where people would gather to facilitate an efficient collection of multiple signatures
were also closed and any gathering of more then ten (10) people in one location was also an arrestable
offense.

In essence, Sheriff Gualtieri and the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners conspired to make it illegal
and virtually impossible to efficiently collect the required 6,814 required signatures by the May 11 th
deadline.

There was one concession made that signatures could be collected “electronically” and not in person,
but the swift banning of petition collection techniques and methods still made it impossible to shift to a
strictly online format in such a short period of time to collect the required signatures. Additionally, an
“online” or “e-signature” often looks nothing like an actual signature, and many of the “e-signatures”
collected would be rejected by the Board of Elections as “not-matching” the voter’s signatures they had
on file. Pinellas County Sheriff Robert Gualtieri was personally responsible for making almost every
aspect of “election petition signature collection” not only impossible, but an arrestable, criminal offense.

In the case of James McLynas, Candidate for Sheriff of Pinellas County Florida, this placed his direct
political opponent, Pinellas County Sheriff Robert Gualtieri in a position to literally be able to make his
attempts to collect petition signatures an arrestable offense, with the incumbent Sheriff Gualtieri the
one making the arrest. Candidate McLynas was literally prohibited from using the petition method of
qualifying on the ballot by his direct opponent’s actions. It is a well documented fact that Sheriff
Gualtieri falsely arrested James McLynas after he announced he would run against Sheriff Gualtieri in
the 2016 election to silence him and remove him from the election. Now, he personally placed obstacles
in the path of candidate McLynas that would make it impossible for him to qualify by petition for the
2020 election.

This placed Candidate McLynas in a position to have to “pay to play” to be on the ballot, when Sheriff
Gualtieri already had the money in pocket to pay the qualifying fee.

The ENTIRE purpose of the petition qualifying process is to give candidates without massive financial
backing the ability to qualify without having to pay the $10,303 fees. Sheriff Gualtieri’s personal actions
prohibited, blocked, interfered with and rendered that petition process for McLynas to qualify on the
2020 Sheriff’s ballot impossible.

This provided Sheriff Gualtieri with an unfair advantage over Candidate McLynas, and allowed Sheriff
Gualtieri to use his powers as Sheriff to manipulate the Sheriff’s election. The May 11, 2020 deadline to
submit petition signatures shut down the process about 40 days after Sheriff Gualtieri conspired to make
the petition qualifying process of Candidate McLynas illegal.

Sheriff Gualtieri could have very easily made “election or campaign” activities one of the “essential
activities” of the Pinellas County order, or specifically stated he would not arrest anyone for conducting
these activities, but he never said any such thing.

Even if James McLynas could come up with the $10,303 by the June 12, 2020 deadline, had Candidate
McLynas been permitted to use the Petition Process, that same $10,303 could have been used for
marketing, signage, campaign advertising or other measures to help win an election. Instead, Candidate
McLynas was forced to spend that $10,303 on a fee to be on the ballot, based all or in great part on the
actions of his political opponent, Sheriff Gualtieri giving him a massive political advantage.

At this point in time I am filing a formal complaint and demanding that all available action be taken to
address this illegal, damaging and unjust action of the use of the powers of Sheriff to attack, harm and
place at a disadvantage on a political opponent and harm the campaign of James McLynas for Sheriff.

These actions by Sheriff Robert Gualtieri can be construed as a violation of 104.0615, 104.091, 104.11,
104.31 and 104.41 as well as any other applicable law or statute.