Post-Election Chaos: Just Another Day in Florida

Late Thursday afternoon, November 8, 2018 current Republican Governor of Florida, candidate for US Senate, and adult space alien baby, Rick Scott filed a lawsuit against Broward County Supervisor of Elections, Brenda Snipes, alleging that she is engaging in acts of fraud on behalf of the Democratic candidates in the election “completed” just two days prior. She is doing this by somehow skewing the numbers such that they continue to run in consistent proportions against Governor Scott and all other Republican candidates.

The fact that the numbers skew heavily against Republicans in a county that routinely runs 70/30 in favor of any random Democrat has them clutching their pearls and suffering from the vapors.

Thursday’s meeting of the county Canvassing Board convened for the single purpose of reviewing and showing the results of the provisional ballots. By Florida Statute, such ballots are cast by anyone who appears at a voting location, who is not then verifiable as registered in the database. They are then given the chance to vote, with that vote immediately sealed for later review in the event that it can be verified at the conclusion of the election.

The meeting was held in a largish room about 50’ x 75’ along the left wall was a series of windows, the other side of which contained the vote counting machines, looking like large office copiers with computer screens attached, being operated by about a dozen or so election employees keeping them running constantly while surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of office boxes, presumably containing counted ballots, as smaller plastic document trays were wheeled in, all containing reams of ballots which were fed into the machines. We were told that these were late-arriving absentee/mail-in ballots, or possibly untabulated early vote ballots as well. Everyone was surprised to see so much left to be counted though some veterans of the Broward ballot wars seemed more disgusted than surprised that such a spectacle was necessary.

The room was cordoned in half on one side with spectators, perhaps 20 representatives of the campaigns, mostly lawyers in suits, about the same number of media reps, not so nattily attired, a few elected officials, and a sprinkling of members of the general public. On the other side was the Canvassing Board, consisting of two county judges, supported by a couple county attorneys, some staff, and joined by Supervisor Snipes.

Early in the day a clarion call had gone out across the interwebs seeking volunteers to assist in calling and locating people who had submitted provisional ballots. These volunteers were needed so that those ballots could be “perfected” via affidavit to bolster the chances of them getting calculated. The sense from these messages was that if enough people chipped in, it would be enough to tilt the balance of the election.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. While no vote should be minimized or made light of, the notion that provisional ballots would be the key to turning the tables on a few typically close Florida statewide elections is utter nonsense. And the notion that hordes of volunteers could help save the day, similar nonsense.

As it happened, the total number of provisional ballots returned to the Supervisor’s office, in the second most populous county in the state, where 700,000 votes were already counted, came to 661.

Of those 661, 205 were immediately identified as erroneously categorized as provisional and instead should have been counted as regular ballots and tabulated as such. But what happened instead stands as a microcosm of everything wrong with Broward, and ultimately, all of Florida’s two decades of torturous elections.

At first, it was announced that those ballots, being as good as any other properly submitted voter ballot, was run through the machines and counted as was appropriate. That announcement resulted in an uproar from one of the representatives of the Rick Scott campaign, attorney William R. Scherer of Fort Lauderdale firm Conrad & Scherer, LLP. With grandiloquent gesticulations he insisted that Supervisor Snipes was breaking the law by counting the ballots before they were examined by the Canvassing Board. He wondered aloud how the Snipes could “unring the bell” now that the ballots had been counted? The short but hesitantly offered answer was that it couldn’t be unrung. The votes counted.

In response, attorney for the Nelson campaign, Todd Falzone of Fort Lauderdale firm Kelley/Uustal explained that the requirement that provisional ballots be examined by the Canvassing Board doesn’t apply to ballots wrongfully put into a provisional ballot envelope. If a poll worker makes a mistake in determining that someone must vote provisionally rather than through the regular voting process, the simple remedy is to run the ballot as correct at the earliest opportunity. There was no bell needing to be unrung. Instead, what counsel for Rick Scott was doing was nothing more than an effort to perform for the cameras while casting a cloud over a result that at the very moment the argument was taking place, was getting closer and closer as more late results came in. In fact, it was just about that time that word began filtering through the crowd that the threshold for the Senate race had been reached to trigger an automatic handcount of all tabulated votes. This Senate race had now become the closest in Florida history. And rather than allow the process to play out, the Governor was doing everything he could to grandstand and simply make up out of whole cloth, insinuations that somehow fake ballots were being allowed to slip through in enormous numbers, regardless of the reality that no such evidence exists to suggest much less prove such allegations.

But the argument appeared to have rattled Supervisor Snipes, who has had multiple problems with her election management throughout her tenure. Snipes herself was originally appointed to the office in 2005 by then governor Jeb Bush following the suspension and removal in disgrace of the previous county Supervisor of Elections, Miriam Oliphant. Whispers in the room also insinuated that part of the rancor held by Mr. Scherer against Dr. Snipes came about because he was instrumental in Snipes’ appointment but is now deeply disappointed in her effectiveness at her job.

After a brief break, the Board reconvened and Dr. Snipes announced that the 205 ballots had NOT been tabulated but had been merely “set aside for now”. Total confusion followed as it was argued again that if they weren’t provisional in character then tabulating is appropriate, while if they were provisional, their envelopes should not have been opened outside of the supervision of the Canvassing Board. To do so would thoroughly invalidate the ballots altogether.

And thus we get to the real problem in Broward County. Brenda Snipes is, by all appearances and by her actions going back over a decade, incompetent in her role as the caretaker of the voting rights of citizens of Broward County. In addition to this relatively small problem of 205 votes, we had, still running just to our left, the ongoing counting of votes which we didn’t know if they were early votes, Election Day votes, mail-in votes, or some combination. She has been completely incapable of providing the public any information on what exactly is going on. She is required by law to do so. She is required by law to have all these votes, except for provisionals and military/overseas votes, fully counted within 30 minutes of the closing of the polls. Yet here we were nearly 2 full days after the election ended and on the cusp of the closest elections this side of Bush v Gore.

But this points up an even larger problem in the state. The Republicans focus all of their negative energy at Broward because it’s the second largest county by population in the state but is far and away the most reliably Democratic county in the state, ringing up totals that are routinely in range of a 70/30 split. At this writing the split is 68/32 favoring the Dems in both races. Regardless of the focus on Broward, it is NOT the only county still counting votes. Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Duval (Jacksonville) are running ballots as well.

If all of the most populous counties are struggling to get their votes counted, this speaks to a more systemic problem. It suggests that someone may be asleep at the wheel at the Florida Secretary of State’s office. It is from there that resources and oversight come. And in the same sense that every county knows well in advance when an election is scheduled and should be prepared accordingly, the Secretary of State should be sure that the big counties have what they need in equipment and staffing to get the job done, and the oversight to assure it’s getting done. Clearly neither are taking place. So as the competency of Brenda Snipes can be called into question, the attention to all citizens’ voting rights should be called into question with Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a two term appointee of, yes, Governor Rick Scott.

The irony is that again, while all of this was taking place, Scott filed a lawsuit against Brenda Snipes that accuses her of fraud in all but name. The suit states that the failure on her part to produce records of votes tabulated and not yet tabulated is causing “irreparable public injury”. The complaint does not say what this injury is, nor does it make any mention of other counties and their similar efforts to produce information or explain why they too have yet to finalize their counts. And it also asks for no remedy beyond any “relief as the Court deems appropriate.”

In other words, really there’s no harm in counting the votes no matter how long it takes. But on the off chance they can get a judge to stop the process, thereby ending any chances that the results as announced could be overturned by actual numbers of votes, the Scott (and by extension DeSantis) campaign will be more than happy to accept it.

Ultimately we are witnessing a Republican attempt to avoid counting all the legitimate votes cast. Rather than acknowledging a concern that maybe they lost fair and square, they prefer to blame the Republican appointed Supervisor of a Democratic county while conveniently ignoring the fact that other Democratic counties are having the exact same problem in a state run almost entirely by gerrymandered-in-place Republicans.

Despite it all, despite the mismanagement and faux outrage, once again, a Florida election heads to a recount. But no worries, in Florida there is plenty of incompetence and corruption to go around for everyone.