Elections officials across Florida are poking holes in the DeSantis administration's claims that they're to blame after 20 people were arrested for voting illegally.

Driving the news: Supervisors of elections in Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties say it's the state's responsibility to notify local election offices about people ineligible to vote because of certain prior felony convictions, Politico reports.

• Pete Antonacci, who DeSantis appointed as head of his elections investigation office, contradicted the governor's claims by telling local election supervisors in a letter earlier this month that they were not at fault in allowing the ex-felons to vote in 2020.

Why it matters: If the charges don't stick, DeSantis will have egg on his face after making a show of the arrests to tout ​​his new election security task force.

• Some of the people arrested have said they thought they were allowed to vote.
• In 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot measure to restore the voting rights of people with prior felony convictions. Alas, it excepted people who had convictions for murder or a felony sex offense.
• A lawyer for one of the Miami-Dade defendants told Politico reporter Matt Dixon that police dragged his client out of his home in his underwear for the arrest.

What they're saying: "His own administration greenlighted the defendants' voter registration applications, and now it has arrested them for voting," Slate's Mark Joseph Stern writes. "That doesn't look like election security. It looks like entrapment."

• Stern points out that Antonacci was Broward County's supervisor of elections when the recently arrested voters registered there.

Neil Volz, deputy director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, told NPR Florida law requires "the state to prove that someone willfully, intentionally, knowingly registered or voted while knowing that they were ineligible."

• But voting rights advocates warn that often in criminal prosecutions, those charged plead guilty to avoid a jury trial.
• "If you can't count on the government to tell you if you are eligible to vote, then who can you count on?" Volz said.

🧩 Can a puzzle be art?

What's happening: Former trustees of the scandal-hit Orlando Museum of Art who were dismissed from the governing board last week now say they were kept in the dark about the FBI's investigation into the authenticity of purported Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings.

• And they say they were "terminated" from the volunteer board when they called a meeting to discuss how the board chair was handling the situation, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Driving the news: Board chair Cynthia Brumback wrote a column Aug. 18 to address the fallout from the June FBI raid when agents seized paintings that were part of the museum's "Heroes and Monsters" exhibit, said to be never-before-seen Basquiat works that had been found in a storage locker.

• She wrote that she and the board "continue to feel embarrassment" from the "negative attention" and asked the community to "stand by us."

The intrigue: The column raised a timing issue. Brumback wrote that the FBI had subpoenaed the museum in July 2021, months before the exhibit's February opening. Then:

• "Our director presented us with several authentication reports, specifically one from Diego Cortez, the now-deceased man widely credited with 'discovering' Basquiat and who served on Basquiat's estate's official authentication committee," she wrote.
• "Based on this and the other reports, our director reassured us that everything was in order."

Yes, but: Trustees told the Sentinel they were never informed the museum had been served the subpoena and knew nothing was amiss until the raid.

• When they raised concerns about Brumback's handling of the issue, they received an email informing them they'd been dismissed from the board due to term limits.
• A press release followed from a new exhibition-vetting task force’s co-chairs, Mark Elliott and Nancy Wolf, saying the members had exceeded their term limits.

Meanwhile, interim director Luder Whitlock, who replaced fired director Aaron De Groft, resigned last week after just six weeks on the job.

• Brumback stepped down as chair but was replaced by Elliott, seen as her close ally, and remains on the board, which is now trying to find a new museum director.

🧑‍🏫 The local teacher shortage appears not to be as dire as officials initially thought. (Tampa Bay Times)

🚙 FDOT has begun installing 880 bollards to stop vehicle traffic from encroaching on the mangroves along Gandy Beach. Before, you could drive right up to the water. (WTSP)

🐂 Video captured Saturday shows a bull getting loose at the Florida State Fairgrounds and running around the rodeo arena as screaming guests flee to safety. No injuries were reported. (Fox 13)

💸 The White House took aim at U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan on Twitter after the congressman criticized the student loan relief program on television, noting that he had over $2.3 million in PPP loans forgiven. (Bradenton Herald)

Northern Trust Corporation is the latest tenant to lease space in the new Thousand & One building at Water Street Tampa.

What's happening: The Chicago-based wealth management firm will move from 425 N. Florida Ave. into 10,000 square feet on the ninth floor of the trophy office tower in the coming months, developer Strategic Property Partners announced yesterday.

The big picture: Others leasing space in the tower so far are Sila Realty Trust, Synovus, RSM, Suffolk Construction and ReliaQuest, the largest office tenant with 145,000 square feet across seven floors.

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👋 Hey, did you ever want to know cool stuff about birds to make lots of new friends?

• Well, this is the time of year when we should watch for a slew of warblers to migrate through on their way south, to the tropics.

🐦 Snowbirds!

• The one pictured above is a chestnut-sided warbler. (See the chestnut on his sides? That's how you remember!)

Here are some others to look for:

Blackburnian warbler

Palm warbler

Yellow-rumped warbler

Golden-winged warbler

Of note: Get better at birdwatching by using the four keys to visual identification: size & shape, color pattern, behavior, and habitat.