Elections chief will resign after week of controversy

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.

MIAMI — Brenda Snipes, the elections supervisor of Broward County, Florida, turned in a letter of resignation Sunday, hours after the conclu- sion of a vote recount that exposed a series of failures in her office, including a poorly designed ballot that may have contributed to fewer votes being cast in the U.S. Senate race.

Snipes, an elected Demo- crat who was the subject of searing criticism during the recount, submitted her resignation to the state government in Tallahassee, effec- tive Jan. 4.

“It has been my passion and honor to serve as the Super- visor 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 vul- nerable 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 sena- tor-elect, last week had asked the state’s Department of Law Enforcement to investigate potential wrongdoing in Snipes’ office.

Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, a former spokeswoman 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,” Pérez-Verdía said. “Someone that is loyal to the people and the voters, versus to a political party.”

Snipes, 75, did not immedi- ately comment on her plans. Her intended departure was first reported by the Sun Sen- tinel 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 elec- tions,” she said.

It was a week full of serious issues. 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 unfamiliar- ity 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, incumbent senator Bill Nelson.

Earlier, during the initial counting of votes, Snipes’ office 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.

Even before bei ng denounced by Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and President Donald Trump himself, Snipes’ tenure had been marred by problems, including the unlawful destruction of ballots in a 2016 congressional race that should have been kept for review, and the mishandling and misprinting of mailed-in ballots.

Democrats were highly critical of the design of the ballots in Broward County. The Nov. 6 election results showed that some 30,000 Broward voters did notmake a choice in the Senate race — a significant undervote attributed to a ballot design that tucked the contest on the bottom left-hand corner of the page.