Susan Bucher revisited – Why removing her from office was the right thing to do
Bottom Line: In the immediate aftermath of the election debacle in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, I brought you regular, updated information regarding election laws being violated in both counties. With Susan Bucher now suspended and challenging the decision by Governor DeSantis to remove her from the post – here's a refresher on the laws her office broke (citing Florida election law statues).
The supervisor of elections shall upload into the county’s election management system by 7 p.m. on the day before the election the results of all early voting and vote-by-mail ballots that have been canvassed and tabulated by the end of the early voting period.
That didn’t happen, nor was any expedited effort made to attempt to comply with the law. In other words, not only was this illegal, it was blatant disregard for the law. Next up...
The canvassing board shall report all early voting and all tabulated vote-by-mail results to the Department of State within 30 minutes after the polls close.
Nope, that didn’t happen either. The second violation of Florida Election law.
The canvassing board shall report, with the exception of provisional ballot results, updated precinct election results to the department at least every 45 minutes until all results are completely reported. The supervisor of elections shall notify the department immediately of any circumstances that do not permit periodic updates as required.
Once again, not only did none of that occur, there was blatant disregard for the law as no effort to come into compliance with it was ever made. That makes three violations of law.
If the county canvassing board determines that the unofficial returns may contain a counting error in which the vote tabulation system failed to count votes that were properly marked in accordance with the instructions on the ballot, the county canvassing board shall:
(a) Correct the error and retabulate the affected ballots with the vote tabulation system
Here’s the fourth violation...Rather than the canvassing board making judgements about damaged and/or erroneous ballots – it was Susan Bucher and her team unilaterally creating their own standard. Florida’s 15th Circuit Court, ruled this activity to be in violation of the law.
Art. V, § 5 of the Florida Constitution and the Public Records Act.
Here’s the fifth law broken. Last Susan Bucher’s office continued to violate reporting standards for over and under votes as mandated by law along with total ballot information. Florida’s 15th Circuit Court also ruled that Susan Bucher had violated the law.
Court order to comply with the Florida Constitution and the Public Records Act.
This was the sixth violation. After failing to abide by the law originally, when ordered to comply by 7pm that day, Susan Bucher still failed to do so.
What we’re left with is a minimum of six violated laws and a court order by Palm Beach County’s Election Supervisor. Two of those violations arrived at the level of voter/electoral fraud under Florida law. And this is all aside from the failure to come close to completing machine recounts as mandated by law until after Christmas. It’s not a question as to if she should have been removed. Her offenses were only slightly less significant than the misfeasance that took place in Broward. Governor DeSantis did the right thing. It's clear that Ron’s willing to do what’s right and not just follow public opinion in making these significant decisions.
Here’s a link for the entire Florida election code: https://bit.ly/2PiaJZ0