South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
■ Broward vote total sent to state included two dozen rejected ballots.
Broward election officials sent their voting results to the state on time Saturday, but the totals included votes on some two dozen ballots rejected by the county’s Canvassing Board.
Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said her office will begin a machine recount of three state and four local races at 7 a.m. Sunday, after conducting a test of the vote-counting equipment. The county has until 3 p.m. Thursday to complete the recount
Sunday’s recount is needed because the leading candidates’ vote totals in each of the seven contested races are within a half-percentage point of each other, which require an automatic recount under state law.
The three state races — governor, U.S. Senator and agriculture commissioner — will be done along with races for Plantation mayor, Pompano Beach mayor, West Park City Commission Seat 1 and Walnut Creek Community Development District Seat 3.
Rejected ballots counted anyway
Republicans objected to Snipes including rejected ballots in the vote count, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio criticized her for it on Twitter, but Snipes said the rejected ballots could not be removed without also rejecting close to 180 valid ballots.
“It seems unfair to me to disenfranchise 205 voters at the expense of a small number,” Snipes said. “If that’s being unfair to anyone, I don’t think it’s a large enough number to reflect the difference between who comes out of the recounts as the victor.”
This controversy over the Broward vote involved
205 provisional ballots that were opened and processed before the Canvassing Board had a chance to review their eligibility. The Canvassing Board on Friday evening rejected about two dozen of those ballots, mostly because board members decided the signatures didn’t match those on file.
These voters had to cast provisional ballots on Election Day because of electronic connectivity issues with equipment that prevented poll workers from verifying their signature and voter information.
However, because the ballots can no longer be matched with their envelopes, there’s no way to isolate the ones the board rejected. A Republican Party representative said all the votes should be thrown out because Snipes mishandled them.
“I think the supervisor of elections spoiled them,” said Leonard Collins, an attorney for the Republican Party of Florida. “She spoiled them by opening them and separating the ballots from the envelopes in violation of Florida law.”
Collins said the action also violated Broward Circuit Judge Raag Singhal’s earlier ruling that he said required Snipes to bring all provisional ballots before the Canvassing Board before opening.
Although counted, the
205 votes are being kept on a separate drive so that they can be removed if their inclusion is successfully challenged.
Vote totals
The county’s updated vote results were posted online just after noon Saturday. In all, the county processed 41,602 votes Wednesday through Saturday after Election Day but said all the votes were received by 7 p.m. Tuesday, when the polls closed.
The county’s total vote was 714,859 ballots cast, which represents a 60.85 percent voter turnout.
The only thing left out of the updated count were about 25 ballot pages that the Canvassing Board still needed to review before they were processed, and military and overseas votes that have to be postmarked by Nov. 6 but can be Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes and Judge Betsy Benson of the Broward County Canvassing Board examine ballots on Friday.
counted if they arrive by Friday.
The Broward Canvassing Board has spent the last three days reviewing voter eligibility questions and determining voter intent on ballots that machines have kicked out because of marks made on pages outside of the bubble circles.
Snipes defended her vote-counting operations. She said her office adhered
to state law requiring early voting and mail-in ballots be posted within 30 minutes of the polls closing on Election Day. The requirement does not mean all of those votes have to be posted in that time, she said.
“You’re not expected to have a complete result for 700,000 people 30 minutes after polls close,” Snipes said.
Snipes under fire
Snipes has come under heavy criticism for her handling of the election and the delay in getting out the vote results.
“How can anyone trust more illegal votes aren’[t] in their final count?” Rubio tweeted after the rejected ballots were included.
Trump tweeted on Friday: “Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!”
Snipes’ attorney, Eugene Pettis, said accusations of fraud against Snipes are unfounded.
“It’s very important that we listen to facts and not fiction,” Pettis said. “To give a claim of fraud without any evidence, I think, is unacceptable, should be unacceptable in our electoral process.”
The state Division of Elections has had two people monitoring activities in the Broward elections office after Snipes had admitted in a court proceeding to prematurely destroying ballots in the 2016 race between U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Canova.
“Department observers continue to monitor the administration of the election through the certification of results. Our staff has seen no evidence of criminal activity at this time,” said Department of State spokeswoman Sarah Revell.
Some of the criticism of Snipes has been suspect. Images of sealed “provisional ballot box” left behind at polling stations have been spreading throughout social media — Rubio himself tweeted several — boxes that the elections office said only contain supplies used at the polling sites on Election Day. The boxes have the provisional ballot markings because they are used during the day to hold the provisional ballots, which are sent in a separate bag to the election office after the polls close.
“There are tweets going out that trucks are being loaded, downloading new ballots. That’s simply not true,” Pettis said. “They’re taking equipment, chairs, desks — those type of things — off the premises. So we need to deal with reality. Don’t follow everything on social media.”