Another alarming elections misstep

Broward Elections Supervisor Antonacci promised to restore voter confidence

Broward Elections Supervisor Pete Antonacci was supposed to be Mr. Fix-It, a hands-on manager who promised to sweat the small stuff and restore voter confidence in the county’s troubled elections office.

Yet this week, we learned that his office sent out a chilling “address verification final notice” to 54,000 voters, saying: “The Supervisor of Elections has received information that you may no longer live at the address on our voter registration records.”

The error came to light only because one of the wrongly flagged voters was Ken Evans, who has lived in the same home for two decades, has been a faithful voter since 1973 and serves as Broward’s Democratic state committeeman. Evans wisely cried foul to anyone who would listen.

Mistakes happen. We get that. But this was a doozy from an elections office famous for them.

And given how he got the job, Antonacci should have gone over and above to alert the public that he’d failed to attend to details.

Recall that after last November’s election, then-Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who had delivered a disastrous performance, announced plans to retire in January, but then-Gov. Rick Scott refused to wait. Instead, he suspended Snipes and replaced her with Antonacci, a politically astute Republican lawyer with no elections experience.

Antonacci and Scott go way back. After serving as Scott’s general counsel, the governor appointed Antonacci to a series of top jobs — at the South Florida Water Management District, the Palm Beach County prosecutor’s office and Enterprise Florida. Along the way, Antonacci screened judges, slashed water management budgets and callously ended the career of Gerald Bailey, a top state law enforcement official.

The appointment of Antonacci sent a shock wave through this Democraticleaning county, which plays a pivotal role in state and national elections. How is it possible that out of 2 million residents, the Republican governor couldn’t find a single qualified person to run our elections office? Instead, he chose a Tallahassee operative known for doing his bidding.

And for the record, Scott wants Donald Trump reelected next year.

On his arrival, Antonacci said all the right things about ensuring fair and accurate elections. But given the optics, it’s on him to build trust. And sending alarming postcards is a major setback.

It’s not his first.

Shortly after taking office, Antonacci made clear that he disagreed with proponents of Amendment 4, who said the amendment, which automatically restores voting rights to certain nonviolent felons, was self-implementing. Instead, Antonacci said he would seek the guidance of Florida’s Republican-led Legislature, which opposed the measure and went on to erect roadblocks.

It wasn’t the only time Antonacci proved himself out of step with this Democraticleaning county.

To defend himself in the Amendment 4 lawsuit, Antonacci chose a lawyer who worked with the wife of the judge assigned to the case. Republicans considered the judge “unfriendly” because he had previously ruled that the state’s process of denying felons their voting rights was unconstitutional. Because of who Antonacci hired, the judge had to recuse himself. In doing so, he called Antonacci’s choice “deeply troubling.”

And now this.

Refreshing the accuracy of voter rolls is a tall order required by state law in oddnumbered years, between major elections. But Antonacci was not required to send his initial mailing to all 1.2 million Broward voters. Other counties limit those mailings to people who have not voted, requested a ballot or updated their registration for two years.

Antonacci blamed technology and errors by the bulk mail vendor, such as incorrect zip codes. He lamented the lack of “trip wires” to catch software problems and said someone in his office should have alerted him to the high number of final notices coming back as undeliverable. He agreed the notices were “a little bit scary” and quickly apologized.

“This should not have happened,” Antonacci said in a phone call Friday with congressional staff members and the media.

Problem solved?

Not hardly.

Evans’ Facebook page was full of comments from people accusing Antonacci of trying to “purge” Democratic voters.

The incident calls to mind the fiasco of 2012, when Scott launched an ill-advised search for noncitizens in the statewide voter database. His attempted purge led to lawsuits, lots of negative national publicity and very few illegal voters.

Antonacci emphasizes that his office does not remove voters from the roll. They are moved to inactive status if they fail to return the address verification final notice or if a notice is returned as undeliverable by the Postal Service. Inactive voters can still vote. But an inactive voter who skips two consecutive federal elections becomes ineligible and must re-register.

With the stakes so high and the nation so polarized, Antonacci must be mindful that voters are on high alert for any whiff of shenanigans from him.

Instead of scaring people that they may not be able to vote, he should become far more visible in registering new voters, especially young people of color who statistically are less likely to vote. That won’t help President Trump — Rick Scott’s candidate — but it’s the right step in one of the nation’s most diverse counties.

Meanwhile, we urge Broward County commissioners to schedule regular public discussions with Antonacci about election preparations: poll worker recruitment and training, voter registration, voting sites, early voting, voting by mail, ballot design and other issues. Antonacci does not work for commissioners, but they approve his budget. And greater oversight might give the public greater assurance.

If anything positive is to come from this, it is that voters should be sure of the accuracy of their registration. That takes a few clicks on the elections website.

Next week, Antonacci will send out 54,000 postcards, apologizing in writing for the mistake-prone mailing. Voters and taxpayers deserve the highest level of efficiency, not apologies.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Sergio Bustos, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.