Florida isn’t the problem. Illegal activity in Palm Beach and Broward is.
Excerpt: After the presidential recount in 2000 that helped launch the nickname “Flori-duh” into the nation’s vernacular, state lawmakers passed a sweeping set of election reforms.
The butterfly ballot? Gone. Hanging chads? Banished.
So what about those reforms? Did the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 and other changes go far enough?
Today, after the reform act, there has been more attention toward training election officials, and 15 pages of state rules illustrate examples of ways voters could fill out their ballots – other than filling in the bubble or arrow next to a candidate’s name – and how those will be counted.
Bottom Line: Back to the headline of the story. It’s incredibly simple. Laws have been broken and Susan Bucher and Brenda Snipes are incompetent. The reason why recounts, and voting for that matter, aren’t issues in the other 65 counties, including the largest of all – Miami-Dade is just as simple. They followed the law and have competent supervisors. Any questions? But that’s also not the end of the story either. The lawlessness and incompetence of both Supervisors of Elections have been feasted upon by those who care more about winning elections than the rule of law. Even now with deadlines looming, Bill Nelson is fighting to hold up the recounts of the entire state – even the counties who completed their recounts because of his desire to win at any cost exploiting Palm Beach County’s lawlessness and incompetence to attempt to do so.
If laws were followed and deadlines were followed, and candidates cared more about the law than themselves we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But that’s not what we have. What’s important now is that lawlessness and incompetence are met with accountability and politicians attempting to exploit it never win elective office again. What’s more is that despite the false and baseless reporting of media outlets across the state that there hasn’t been voter fraud in Palm Beach or Broward counties, contrary to the three-part story I brought you earlier this week, comes the revelation from the Florida Department of State first broken by Politico that indeed the Florida Democratic party potentially illegally contacted voters to correct mail-in ballots after Election Day in at least four counties. Broward, Citrus, Okaloosa & Santa Rosa/