Broward County continues to struggle with the most basic demands of being a functioning democratic system. In fairness to Florida, all but a couple counties showed that they are prepared for democracy. However, Broward (which has been accused of mismanagement for years) fulfilled the worst expectations by filing its recount results two minutes late. It might have been two days for all that it matters. That is the problem with legal deadlines. There are generally no mulligans. Broward released an announcement that none of its recount would count. Despite the defense of Brenda Snipes by Democratic leaders like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the latest failure of her office removes any question about the level of mismanagement of the county (as well as those responsible for Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties). Snipes recently boasted that she never missed deadlines. To miss a deadline by minutes just shows a complete lack of supervisory competence.
Joseph D’Alessandro, Broward County’s election planning and development director simply said “Basically, I just worked my ass off for nothing.” He explained that they just weren’t familiar with the website and had trouble uploading the results. Really? How about having someone confirming the steps in advance and starting a tad earlier?
D’Alessandro simply said that “We uploaded to the state two minutes late so the state has chosen not to use our machine recount results. They are going to use our first unofficial results as our second unofficial results.”
So we have spent hundreds of millions in state support and Florida has spent millions since the debacle of the Bush-Gore election . . . and so little seems to have changed in the Florida counties.
Making this all the more controversial, GOP candidate Rick Scott’s campaign has accused Snipes of intentionally missing the deadline to invalidate a count that favored his campaign.
How long did they sit around drawing a paycheck and drinking coffee and laughing. Remember they refused to let poll watchers observe and those photos are easily posed for and faked. by setting out a few different boxes and using the timer on the camera. Without independent and other party poll watchers ALL results are suspect.
2020, Hilary and Jeff Flake. Golly what a combo.
There’s got to be a few more democrat votes kicking around.
Forget it jake, it’s Floriduh.
The Republicans have controlled the governorship since 1999 and have controlled the state legislature the bulk of that time. For a time, the speaker of the lower house thereof was Marco Rubio. What did they accomplish in reforming Florida’s system of elections administration, which was manifestly dysfunctional 18 years ago? Bupkis. You snooze, you lose.
The incompetence is worse than just this election. It caused distrust of the election process itself and may well lead to violent repercussions regardless of the outcome when citizens feel their vote has been made worthless. Those in charge need to be fired and possibly prosecuted. No excuses period, the integrity of elections needs to be rock solid.
“integrity of elections”
Bernie Sanders tried that and look what Debbie Wasserman Shlut did to him
This is wrong and should be declared unconstitutional. How can it be legal for an election supervisor to negate a recount just by failing to turn in the data. What if it was a tight presidential race and s/he knew s/he could throw the race to his/her preferred candidate just by not sending in results? Also this disenfranchises absentee voters. I understand legal deadlines, but the consequence of missing the deadline should be legal trouble against the supervisor, not the disenfranchisement of voters.
they could always lynch her?
Not legally, no. Or are you just trying to be a cutesy racist?
Georgette – did you see her white bodyguards at her news conferences? You would have to go through them to lynch her. The whole department is in on the fix, it is not just her. She has hired mini-mes to support her and help count the votes the way she needs.
In 2020 the feds need to step in and supervise Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The Broward machine recount was completed midnight Wednesday night. Broward election officials had nearly all day Thursday to upload results in time for 3:00 PM deadline. With nearly an 800 vote advantage to Scott, it is understandable why he suspects that the missed deadline was intentional. All other counties in FL (except for Palm Beach) managed to navigate the website upload recount on time.
Broward: Uff-Da County.
Ah yes then we have the Dumocrats 2020 candidate Miss Hillary who says Stacey Abrams Would Have Won Already ‘If She Had A Fair Election’. Miss Hillary is like the bad penny that always coming back. I wonder if she will declare herself a socialist next go around, never know.
The Great Zambini – if anyone would know about being screwed out of a “fair” election it would Hillary
Zambini
First, Hillary is very likely correct about Ms. Abrams.
The Clintons are rich beyond belief. You must be unusually uninformed to not know that, or else you’re just trying to sound FOXY when you speculate that Hillary might declare herself a socialist.
This my home county. Snipes has become increasingly incompetent/ dishonest. It is interesting to hear people try to blame Rick Scott for not removing her when those same people would howl racism if he had removed her without the request of the Democratic controlled county commission.
This supervisor was tolerated locally because she helped those in power stay in power.
I’m sorry, but that is not the only reason she stayed in office. It is the reverse of the famous “Bronx jury” situation.
Speaking of which, does it seem the case that the most incompetent software developers in the world write software for voting machines?
When it comes to electronic voting machines, the question should be is how these companies are owned by partisans that own machines that can print out in seconds how much is in someones bank account on paper, but can’t seem to print out any paper trail for election officials to tally in the open. These machines are privately owned and operated, they tell officials what the tally is. And what happened to the 20 mil that Rick Scott got from the Feds to update software and machines?
Electronic tabulation machines of a sort used to score multiple choice tests have been around since my decrepit and arthritic self was in elementary school. Why would we need sophisticated software to complete this task?
Remember how you had to use a #2 pencil to completely shade in the correct box for it to count? What were the names of those long, narrow, green and white multiple choice sheets?
I don’t think a system needs to be more sophisticated than necessary. It just has to work, be accurate, leave an original data record (preferably paper, sorry trees), and be difficult to hack or compromise. The less opportunity for employees to meddle with the machine or its results, the better.
And who designs the paper ballots? What the heck is going on with the design of voting machines, software, and ballots? Is it really that hard to create an easy to read list that one can clearly mark? One of the complaints about one of the struggling counties is that the Senate race was listed right under the instructions. The thousands of blank ballots for Senate indicate that people skimmed over the instructions, and then missed the Senate Race on their ballot. They need to stop emphasizing form over function, and just make a list. My state might be taxed to death by Liberals, but at least our ballots are extremely simple to muddle through. Which is good, because since here is no voter ID, or any effort whatsoever to verify who voters are, they have to make it simple for those who are not legally allowed to vote, or for the multi-voters. Helps them sail right through .
Voting machines are highly suspect due to the outcome of annual white hat hacker conferences, I think Def Con is an example, that demonstrates the ease of hacking into them. It seems like the country is waiting for that to happen before much movement is made in the morass of the bureaucracy. At least with a paper ballot, there is a physical paper trail for recounts. If original data is lost or corrupted in a compromised or malfunctioning voting machine, I don’t know how reliable any recovered data would be.
This agency needs to be investigated. I would not be surprised if this was an intentional act, but I would also be equally not surprised if pure incompetence was to blame. Both are equally possible given how stupidly some officials act.
The intentional act half of your reasons seem entirely plausible to me, as well. As for the incompetence, I suspect that has been going on for many years.
Where are the consequences for either incompetence or malfeasance? Officials seeem insulted. It certainly is no meritocracy. If missing deadlines means no Christmas bonus, perhaps they would try a little harder.
Rewarding them, that is the consequence I’ve seen all too often.
I am not familiar with Florida’s official misconduct laws but in my state a person can be the most incompetent automaton in government and suffer no real consequences. There is also little in the state law about mild corruption and influence but if a public official steals or misappropriates money they can get slam-dunked relatively easily. There was at one time where a candidate became both County Coroner and Prosecuting Attorney. In other words he was double-dipping out of the county payroll. I took immediate and great exception to this but he managed to survive when others called this into question, especially since the two offices should remain independent of each other. Then there were times where elected officials hired their own immediate family for positions under the privilege of appointment authority.
While corruption is not rampant in this state, there is considerable abuse of office afoot here and there. But I don’t foresee the legislature having the priority to address the matter.
LOL I see Greg at Usawatchdog had this posted a bit ago.
https://usawatchdog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/1.jpg
https://usawatchdog.com/
I understand the outrage over two minutes but a hard deadline, particularly one with legal force, is a hard deadline; and Broward County knows it. They simply have no excuse.
Call it what it is. It is blatant corruption. The recount favored the Republican, then the officials intentionally missed the deadline and all those votes get tossed. It isn’t incompetence, it is blatant corruption. It’s also voter suppression.
The Democrats have been shouting “Count every vote!” in protests and refusing to concede. But what their slogan really means is “Count every Democrat vote until we get the result we want!”
Since the recount added more votes to Scott, I am very suspicious that the late filing was deliberate.
I have no sympathy. Brenda Snipes is an elected official whom the voters know without a doubt is incompetent. Yet they re-elected her. The people who voted for her are as much to blame for this fiasco as she is.
In New York, elections administration is in the hands of a duumverate in each county. One commissioner is appointed by the Republican county chairman and one by the Democratic county chairman. The office is staffed with patronage employees and the slots are split down the middle between the two parties. The only avenue for fraud is if ACORN types fill out absentee ballots in the name of voters who have moved away. That can be contained by requiring absentee ballot applications to include a photocopy of your drivers’ license. The Republicans in Florida have had 20 years to enact reforms along these lines in elections administration. As ever, we all vote them in, and they get very little accomplished.
There is the conundrum. I speak as someone who has watched every 2 years as Californians vote in higher taxes, and an environment acrimonious to business and encouraging to homeless addicts, and then those same people complain about it. That said, I didn’t see any conservative commercials or much of an attempt to enlighten voters, either. When the media fails to inform voters, they dutifully vote as instructed time after time, to all of our detriment.
SNIPES
“She’s very competent but in a bad way”
Snipes did not turn in her recount on time (2 minutes late) because it gave Rick Scott another 800 votes
and PS: the above quote is from President Donald J Trump 🇺🇸
Broward’s been incompetent for all of the current millennium. That’s a high bar. Not even Chicago stands a chance.
I would say that everything bad they say about Broward Elections is true.
@PCS-I would say everything bad they say about the Dumocrat party is true.