After flubs, election chief quits in Broward County

MIAMI — Brenda Snipes, the elections supervisor of Broward County, Fla., turned in a letter of resignation Sunday, hours after the conclusion of a vote recount that exposed a series of failures in her office, including a poorly designed ballot that may have contributed to a weak showing by the defeated Democratic Senate incumbent, Bill Nelson.

Snipes, an elected Democrat who was the subject of searing criticism during the recount, submitted her resignation to the state government in Tallahassee, effective Jan. 4.

“It has been my passion and honor to serve as the Supervisor of Elections for Broward County voters,” she said in a letter to Gov. Rick Scott. “Although I have enjoyed this work tremendously over these many election cycles, both large and small, I am ready to pass the torch.”

Snipes becomes the first political figure to fall in the wake of the tumultuous recount, which revealed systemic flaws and areas vulnerable to human error in Florida’s election system, 18 years after the infamous presidential recount of 2000.

Scott, who is now the state’s Republican senator-elect, last week had asked the state’s Department of Law Enforcement to investigate potential wrongdoing in Snipes’ office.

Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a former spokesman for the county elections office who has been in touch with Snipes’ close advisers, said she had discussed her plans with her staff.

“All I’m hoping for is that we get a nonpartisan person there,” Perez-Verdia said. “Someone that is loyal to the people and the voters, versus to a political party.”

Snipes, 75, did not immediately comment on her plans. Her intended departure was first reported by The Sun Sentinel of South Florida.

Earlier Sunday, Snipes told reporters that it was clear from the problems that occurred during the past week’s recounts that elections procedures needed to be updated.

“There are some things that need to be tweaked on all sides, in terms of the processes that make up elections,” she said.

Asked if she was concerned that Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor-elect, might try to remove her from office, Snipes said no.

“I haven’t heard anything about that,” she said. But last week, she had said that perhaps it would soon be “time to move on and let someone else” take over the job.

It was a week of serious blunders. Snipes’ office failed to meet the state’s deadline Thursday to submit results of a machine recount by two minutes, an error that was blamed on unfamiliarity with the state’s website. The delay seemed incomprehensible, given that Broward claimed to have completed the recount hours earlier.

The machine recount was also bungled, when it came up more than 2,000 votes short, which left the canvassing board in the position of having to decide which results to use. Snipes said the unrecounted ballots were probably misfiled with another stack of ballots.

“The ballots are in the building,” she said Saturday, adding: “I know that sounds trite. It sounds foolish.”

Her office decided to submit the original tally, in addition to whatever overseas and military ballots had been received since then. The issue was a concern to the political parties, because the machine recount results showed Scott gaining some 700 votes over his Democratic rival, Nelson.

Earlier, during the initial counting of votes, Snipes’ office inadvertently mixed some 20 invalid provisional ballots in a stack of 205 otherwise valid ballots. The canvassing board ultimately accepted all the ballots, saying it would err on the side of allowing them rather than disenfranchising more than 180 valid votes.

Scott’s campaign sued for access to all the voting records, and a court found that Broward had violated public records law and the state’s constitution.

After a statewide recount dragged on for nearly two weeks, top Democratic candidates in the state came agonizingly close but fell short of their avowed goal of reclaiming seats Republicans have held for two decades.

Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum conceded Saturday, followed a day later by Nelson, a three-term incumbent senator. More than 8 million voters weighed in — a far higher turnout than in past midterm elections — but the result was the same for Democrats.

When official returns were posted Sunday, Scott led Nelson in the Senate race by slightly more than 10,000 votes. DeSantis edged Gillum, Florida’s first black nominee for governor, by more than 32,000 votes. State officials will certify the official results today.

Information for this article was contributed by Gary Fineout of The Associated Press.