Broward County admits to co-mingling thousands more ballots, but it still doesn’t add up

by | Nov 16, 2018

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Already almost certain to be relieved of her duties by outgoing Governor Rick Scott, soon-to-be Governor-for-a-Week Carlos Lopez Cantera, or Governor-elect Ron DeSantis when he takes the oath in January, Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes should also be investigated by law enforcement for her staggering level of incompetence that borders on criminal.

Here’s why: not only did she add some 80,000+ ballots to the statewide tally in the three days after election day, she didn’t explain to the voting public where they came from. Then, oops, she “accidentally” spoiled more than 200 ballots by mixing them with known bad ballots, making them impossible to distinguish from one another. Now there’s this: late Thursday a spokesman for her office admitted to reporters that Broward also co-mingled another 2,040 ballots that should not have been mixed in with others. Here’s the relevant paragraph from the Miami Herald:

D’Alessandro also told judges that a discrepancy between the first count and the recount — about 2,040 votes — was due to “a commingling of ballots.”

“We did not correctly handle the ballots,” he said. “We are going to look into that and see what took place.”

At this point, nobody is even surprised anymore. Most voters probably don’t realize just how many there have been – they all started to run together at some point earlier this week. But what’s worse is there is no clear answer as to how they were able to separate these co-mingled ballots from the original count, nor how the error was made in the first place.

And still there’s more! Shocked?  Not any more. It’s possible that another 6,873 vote-by- mail ballots were illegally mixed in with valid votes.

In court today, lawyers for Agriculture Commissioner candidate Matt Caldwell, who trailed Democrat Nikki Fried by just over 5,307 votes last Saturday, told a state judge during a hearing today that Snipes’s office logged 6,873 mail in ballots after the 7pm legal deadline on Election Day – in some cases they were logged a day or more later. Caldwell recount attorney George LeMieux argued that some or all of those votes may be illegal. From Politico:

Former Sen. George LeMieux, representing Republican candidate for agriculture commissioner Matt Caldwell in a lawsuit challenging Broward County vote-counting, told a state judge Thursday that 6,873 votes were logged at the county’s supervisor of elections office after the 7 p.m. poll closing time the night of the Nov. 6 election. 

An attorney for Snipes disputed the accusation, saying that just because they were logged after the deadline doesn’t mean they weren’t received on time.

But given Snipes’ history of failures, vote tampering, vote spoilage, legal violations and sloppy accounting, the judge granted Caldwell’s motion against Snipes. The court ordered her to provide additional information to determine exactly when the ballots were received and that any late ballots weren’t also co-mingled with on-time ballots.

And we’re still waiting on a full accounting of where all 83,000 post election day ballots came from in Broward County.

1 Comment

  1. Aqualung

    Holding my breath for answers…