The case for ousting Broward’s elections supervisor

After my August 30, 2016 Democratic primary against incumbent Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, election integrity experts reported their serious concerns to me about the accuracy of the official results. I decided to put in a public records request at my own expense to inspect the ballots and verify the vote.

Beginning in November 2016, we made several public records requests, only to be stonewalled for many months by Brenda Snipes, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. Last June 2017, I finally filed a lawsuit in Florida Circuit Court.

On September 1, 2017, just days after I filed a motion to compel the production of the paper ballots, Snipes ordered the destruction of all the original paper ballots cast. Snipes did not inform me or the court that she had destroyed the records.

In October 2017, the court ordered Snipes to allow me to inspect and copy the ballots. I then paid $5586 to the supervisor’s office, but when my team arrived, they were shown digital images after being told for months that the supervisor had not taken any digital scanned images of the ballots. Unbeknownst to us or the court, after Snipes destroyed the records, she entered into a contract with a private vendor and paid them $15,000 to manipulate digital ballot images to purportedly make them accessible for inspection.

It was not until November 2017 that Snipes’ attorney revealed the ballots had been destroyed. In granting me summary judgment, the court ruled that Snipes had violated federal and state laws requiring preservation of the ballots for 22 months in federal elections (punishable by up to a year in prison) and Florida’s public records statute (a felony punishable by up to five years in prison).

As if that’s not enough, the ballot destruction order signed by Snipes falsely certified that the ballots were not the subject of pending litigation. As the court ruled, this constituted destruction of evidence in violation of state law and court rules.

Snipes’s defense is that she regularly signs orders without reading them, an admission of gross negligence and breach of basic duties that should disqualify her from ever supervising again. Instead, Snipes continues to make an annual salary of $177,628.

But there’s more. After destroying the ballots, Snipes has continued to litigate for months, calling into question the supervisor’s legal obligation to act in good faith. Had the supervisor settled this case when she destroyed the ballots, it probably would have cost Broward taxpayers about $50,000 in my attorneys’ fees, and probably even more for the supervisor’s outside counsel.

By continuing with the litigation, Snipes has likely added a quarter million dollars of attorneys’ fees on each side. If allowed to continue in office with her frivolous motions and appeals, Snipes will cost Broward taxpayers perhaps another half million dollars.

Snipes claims that there was no harm to me or the public because of those suspicious digital scanned ballot images. However, according to elections experts, without the original paper ballots, it is impossible to verify the election results. After a year of drumbeat about alleged Russian hacking into U.S. election systems, the supervisor apparently sees no threat that these digital scanned images could ever be hacked or its software manipulated.

Unfortunately, there are a large number of ways the scanning process could produce an incorrect ballot count. Ballots could have been lost or replaced before scanning; ballot-on-demand machines could have produced extra ballots; digital images could have been accidentally or deliberately repeated numerous times. Digital images themselves can be altered, and there was no convincing chain-of-custody evidence presented by Snipes for these digital images.

Finally, the process of creating the digital images involved assistance from that private vendor hired by Snipes, as well as using third-party proprietary software not subject to inspection by the public or courts.

Most troubling is Snipes abuse of her authority, using taxpayer dollars to bleed me and my campaign of financial resources. This appears to be a deliberate strategy that serves Snipes’ interest to remain in office and her outside counsel’s interest in racking up more legal fees, as well as my opponent’s interest in undermining my campaign.

It is time for Gov. Rick Scott to suspend Brenda Snipes as supervisor of elections and to appoint someone who has the trust of all citizens. And it’s time for criminal investigations. Snipes’ ballot destruction is just too serious to be swept under the rug. Ignoring such illegal conduct will only serve to normalize election frauds and rigging in the future.

When we lose faith and confidence in the integrity of our elections, our entire democracy suffers.

Ignoring such illegal conduct will only serve to normalize election frauds and rigging in the future.