DeSantis plays partisan politics in suspending Supervisor Bucher

For those keeping score, here’s how Florida’s election reforms are shaping up in the aftermath of the November midterm and the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

■ Last month, Florida’s former Republican governor suspended the Democratic elections supervisor in Broward — the state’s second-largest and most-Democratic county — replacing her with a Republican, a man known as his fixer.

■ On Friday, the new Republican governor suspended the Democratic elections supervisor in Palm Beach County, the state’s third-largest, replacing her with a Republican unknown to voters.

■ As of this writing, neither Republican governor has batted an eye about the Republican elections supervisor in Bay County who accepted ballots by fax, a clear violation of Florida law.

■ And in a battleground state where big races are regularly decided by less than a percentage point, neither former Gov. Rick Scott nor new Gov. Ron DeSantis has expressed any interest in addressing outdated election laws that continue to hamstring our most populous counties, which happen to be Democratic-leaning.

“The goal was to get the large counties to fail,” Palm Beach elections supervisor Susan Bucher told us earlier this week, before her surprise suspension on Friday. “They don’t like the demographics here.”

Nothing is more important in this great democracy than for voters to have confidence in our election systems. And while Bucher clearly made missteps around the November election, Gov. DeSantis overreached in removing this popularly elected official from office, absent a thorough investigation.

His move looks especially partisan given that Bucher hails from Palm Beach County, where President Trump makes his Winter White House. DeSantis owes a lot to the president, whose endorsement elevated him from relative obscurity into the governor’s mansion. The president had Bucher in his sites. She told us she received death threats after he accused her of fabricating ballots in November.

It was one thing for DeSantis to suspend former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel, as he did the previous Friday, for multiple failures of command after the mass shootings in Parkland and at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. But because of investigations made public, there was sufficient reason to believe public safety remained at risk.

It was another thing for former Gov. Scott to remove Brenda Snipes as Broward’s elections supervisor last month. It’s not that Snipes didn’t deserve to be removed. As we’d said in multiple reports over the years, she was too disconnected and too slow to make improvements. Still, Snipes had announced she was resigning Jan. 4. Was it really necessary to kick her out the door?

But DeSantis’ suspension of Bucher is far different. Bucher hadn’t announced plans to resign. And Susan Bucher is no Brenda Snipes.

Bucher came to work every day ready to work. She’s tough, smart and detail-oriented, a reputation that dates back to her days in the Florida House.

“Every night after session, she’d go home and read the bills and mark them up. If a bill was 215 pages, she would stand up in the Florida House the next day and say, ‘On page 122, line 16, it says this,’” recalls former state Sen. Maria Sachs, a Democrat from Delray Beach.

“They named something after her,” Sachs said. “They call it “bucherized.” It meant being shown up by someone who’s studied the bill better than you.”

Bucher doesn’t suffer fools gladly and reportedly doesn’t have a lot of friends in Tallahassee. But she asks good questions and makes good points. You can criticize her for failing to push for new tabulating machines that would quickly recount ballots in multiple races. But she said she had a hard time spending $11 million on machines that will be out of compliance in two years. A committee chair has made changing the law — related to disabled voters — a priority in Tallahassee this year, she said.

Bucher said former Secretary ot State Ken Detzner was well aware of the challenges she faced in recounting three statewide races and one local legislative race. She noted that California has 30 days to certify election results. Florida allows 12 days after the general election, and nine days for a recount.

“Somebody at the state level should have heard our cries. If we have a statewide recount, we’re not going to make it,” she said. “You should not be required to fly additional equipment in, or work crews

24⁄7. Of course you’re going to make mistakes. It’s an unreasonable expectation.”

It’s reported that Bucher will fight her suspension. The Florida Senate will be busy this session convening trials for her and Israel. (Because DeSantis overrode Scott’s order and accepted Snipes’ resignation on Friday, it appears that trial is off.)

Wouldn’t it be better if the Senate spent its time fixing the state’s election laws?

Here are a few questions we’d like considered:

■ Is a nine-day window sufficient time to recount ballots in multiple statewide races in counties with 1.5 to 2 million people? With a thousand people moving to Florida every day, are election laws keeping up?

■ Should election staffs be expected to work 24 hours a day during a recount, or does that affect accuracy, as Bucher maintains?

■ Is the state properly funding our elections systems?

■ Should Florida have a standard ballot design or continue to let counties design their own? In Broward, did the addition of voter instructions in Creole — or the lack of a contested congressional race — lead to a design that led voters in some precincts to miss the U.S. Senate race? Would a color-coded ballot help?

■ How should Florida ensure former felons who register to vote meet the eligibility test of Amendment 4, which passed in November?

■ Should Florida follow other states in randomizing the order of candidate names in nonpartisan races to keep people from changing their last names to something that starts with an A?

■ Should elections offices be designed in a way that lets the public view the count?

■ Can election websites be redesigned to give voters the information they seek?

DeSantis was off to a running start before he stepped off a cliff Friday and suspended Bucher.

He could get back on track by convening a bipartisan elections commission that recommends ways to improve the election laws and keeps our state from becoming a national punchline every Election Day.

Bucher