Home»US»Corruption: Palm Beach County Likely Won’t Make Recount Deadline In Florida Governor, Senate Races

Corruption: Palm Beach County Likely Won’t Make Recount Deadline In Florida Governor, Senate Races

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Unbelievable. The corruption is open, brazen, blatant, and off the charts, and the enemedia, of course, is acting as if it’s all business as usual and even claiming that Republican charges of election fraud have been “debunked,” since the fraud is giving them what they want.

But Rick Scott is obviously right: Bill Nelson — and Andrew Gillum as well — is clearly trying to steal the election, as Democrats move to overturn the will of the people also in Arizona, Georgia, California, and elsewhere.

The Democrats are mad for power, and they will do anything, anything at all, to get it.

After election fraud, watch for even more violence.

“Dem-leaning Palm Beach County says it likely won’t make recount deadline in Florida governor, Senate races,” by Gregg Re and Samuel Chamberlain, Fox News, November 11, 2018 (thanks to Mark):

The supervisor of elections in Florida’s heavily Democratic Palm Beach County said Sunday that she did not believe her department would meet a Thursday deadline to complete recounts in the Sunshine State’s historically tight gubernatorial and Senate races, threatening to further confuse an increasingly chaotic and politically fraught process.

The supervisor, Susan Bucher, told reporters that she did not expect to meet the deadline due to aging equipment. Florida Department of State spokeswoman Sarah Revell told Fox News that under state law, if a county does not submit their results by the deadline, then the results on file at the time take their place. Revell added that Florida’s Secretary of State has no authority to grant extensions.

“Supervisors of Elections are independent officials and they are responsible for deciding when to upgrade or modernize their equipment,” Revell added.

The recount in most other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, were taking place without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

Bucher spoke hours after the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott — which secured an early legal victory against Democratic-leaning Broward County officials over the weekend — went back to court with a fresh salvo of emergency complaints against both Broward and Palm Beach counties. One complaint requests that state sheriff’s officers “impound and secure all voting machines, tallying devices and ballots when they are not in use until the conclusion of the recount.”

In a separate lawsuit, Scott’s team is asking a judge to throw out votes tallied by the Broward County Canvassing Board after Saturday’s noon deadline, in apparent violation of state law, which requires that “[t]he canvassing board shall submit … unofficial returns to the Department of State for each federal, statewide, state, or multicounty office or ballot measure no later than … noon on the fourth day after any general or other election.”

“The Broward and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections has already demonstrated a blatant disregard for Florida’s elections laws, making it more important than ever that we continue to do everything possible to prevent fraud and ensure this recount is operated responsibly,” Chris Hartline, a Scott spokesman, said in a statement.

Lawyer Marc Elias, who is representing the campaign of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, fired back on Twitter.

“Lets [sic] be clear about what we are witnessing in Florida,” Elias wrote. “The sitting Governor is seeking to throw out lawful votes and seize the voting equipment in order to win an election.”

“Somebody needs to cut down on the Red Bull,” a Scott spokesperson wrote on Twitter, in response to a statement by Florida Democrats Executive Director Juan Penalosa that compared Scott to a Latin American dictator. “We requested that ballots and voting machines be protected when not in use. The only reason not to protect the integrity of the ballots and the voting machines is if you are actively promoting or hoping for fraud.”

But Democrats continued to bash the Republican’s effort. “If Rick Scott wanted to make sure every legal ballot is counted, he would not be suing to try and stop voters from having their legal ballot counted as intended,” Nelson said in a statement. “He’s doing this for the same reason he’s been making false and panicked claims about voter fraud — he’s worried that when all the votes are counted he’ll lose this election. We will not allow him to undermine the democratic process and will use every legal tool available to protect the rights of Florida voters.”

Unofficial results show that Republican former Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by 0.41 percentage points in the election for governor. In the Senate race, Scott’s lead over Nelson is 0.14 percentage points. State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. Once completed, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or below, a hand recount will be ordered.

The litigation threw yet another wrench in an increasingly chaotic process reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election recount fiasco. In Broward County, the scheduled start of the recount was delayed Sunday because of a problem with one of the tabulation machines. The Republican Party accused Broward’s supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, of continuing to compromise the process with “incompetence and gross mismanagement” following the delay, which was resolved within two hours.
Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Broward County election planning director Joe D’Alessandro told Fox News that machines in Broward are currently resorting some 3.5 million pages of ballots, and officials said that process could take more than 30 hours alone before any actual counting begins.

Broward County, the state’s second-most populous, is emerging as the epicenter of controversy in the recount. Broward officials said they mistakenly counted 22 absentee ballots that had been rejected, mostly because the signature on the return envelope did not match the one on file.
Brenda Snipes, Broward County supervisor of elections, speaks with officials before a canvassing board meeting Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

Brenda Snipes, Broward County supervisor of elections, speaks with officials before a canvassing board meeting Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

It is a problem that appears impossible to fix because the ballots were mixed in with 205 legal ballots. Snipes, who has long been accused of mismanaging county elections and has been sanctioned by a judge for destroying ballots in a 2016 congressional race, said it would be unfair to throw out all the ballots.

“#BrowardElections office admits the vote count they submitted to state includes 22 illegal votes,” Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio wrote on Twitter Sunday. “We know about these 22 because they got caught breaking law in reviewing 202 ballots. How can anyone trust more illegal votes aren’t in their final count?”
Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Election workers place ballots into electronic counting machines, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, at the Broward Supervisor of Elections office in Lauderhill, Fla. The Florida recount began Sunday morning in Broward County. (Joe Cavaretta /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Undervoting — a phenomenon in which voters don’t cast votes in all the races on the ballot — has become a prominent issue in the race. Rubio pointed out that Broward County is showing that approximately 25,000 fewer votes were cast in the Senate race than the gubernatorial contest — a significant undervote that could be explained by Snipes’ ballot design, which placed the Senate contest directly below the ballot’s instructions, out of line with other races.

In 2006, the last time Nelson was on the ballot alongside a gubernatorial race, only 4,100 fewer people in Broward voted in the Senate race than in the election for governor. (However, at the statewide level this year, 34,051 fewer people voted in the Senate race than the gubernatorial race, a lower figure than the 35,736 undervote in 2006 — even though 3 million more votes were cast in 2018 compared to 2006.)

“How ironic would it be if those who are now bashing our criticism of Snipes in the end wind up arguing that a ballot design error made by her is the reason the Democrats lost?” Rubio said Sunday.

Other Republicans suggested that Democrats shouldn’t get their hopes up as the recounts get underway.
A crowd protests outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. A possible recount looms in a tight Florida governor, Senate and agriculture commission race. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

A crowd protests outside the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Lauderhill, Fla. A possible recount looms in a tight Florida governor, Senate and agriculture commission race. (AP Photo/Joe Skipper)

“Scott trails DeSantis by 10,754 votes in Broward, and Nelson trails Gillum by 10,343,” a Scott campaign source told Fox News. “The idea that the undervotes in Broward County is an opportunity for Nelson to significantly close the gap is not and has never been based on anything but fantasy.”

The recount in most other major population centers, including Miami-Dade and Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in the Tampa Bay area, was ongoing without incident on Sunday. Smaller counties are expected to begin their reviews Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

Republicans have repeatedly cried foul throughout the process, both in court and outside Florida election offices. On Saturday, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz compared Broward County to a “banana republic” and posted video apparently showing him being denied access to election facilities on “safety” grounds.

Protesters chanted, “Lock her up” outside the building earlier in the day, referring to Snipes.

Rubio and other Florida officials have posted numerous videos and images on social media apparently showing boxes of ballots being left behind in public spaces or improperly loaded onto private trucks.

At an emergency court hearing on Friday, state Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ruled there has “been a violation of the Florida Constitution,” as well as the state’s public records act, by Broward officials who had not turned over requested records about the number of votes to be counted. But, Gaetz said, Florida officials were still blocking Republicans from monitoring how they were handling boxes of ballots.

“We have very specific laws in the state to try to prevent fraud,” Scott, the incumbent Florida governor, told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “We had to go to court to force the supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County and Broward County to comply with the law, which is there to prevent fraud.”…

Article posted with permission from Pamela Geller


The Washington Standard

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