South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Antonacci blames ‘management failure’ for election problems
New Broward Elections Supervisor Pete Antonacci says the county’s poor election performance in November was “primarily one of management failure.”
On the same day former supervisor Brenda Snipes was touting the accomplishments of her 15 years in office, Antonacci prepared a “What Went Wrong” memo for his management team, giving his perspective on the election problems and the changes needed going forward.
“Deficient management led to a persistent shortage of staff, a systemic lack of cross-training, planning and budgeting errors,” he wrote Thursday. “Both of these items … led to unnecessary and avoidable cost over-runs as well as very public breakdowns in operations.”
Among the items he highlighted:
The office was more than $1 million over budget because of cost over-runs that “were both foreseeable and avoidable.”
About 15 percent of the office’s 72 authorized positions were vacant during the November elections, leading to “systemic internal issues, chaos and a fundamental lack of trained employees available to achieve the job at hand.”
The office had to hire 20 temporary employees for the November recount who could feed ballots into the tabulation machines “because staff members were not cross-trained to accomplish this very trainable skill.”
The office purchased 875,000 election day ballots for the November election, when fewer than 225,000 ballots were actually cast at the polls, with the excess printing costing taxpayers $1 million.
Antonacci promised to focus on better budget preparation and analysis ahead of the 2020 elections, to ensure full staffing and adequate cross-training, and to have sufficient voting equipment available.
Burnadette Norris-Weeks, the attorney representing Snipes, said it’s clear Antonacci isn’t familiar
with running an elections office.
“I’m not sure how you cross train some of those functions,” she said. “They have very distinct duties and responsibilities.”
Norris-Weeks maintained the “general election went very well.” She disputed the level of cost overruns Antonacci reported, didn’t know “what he’s talking about” regarding too many ballots being ordered and predicted he would be seeking an even bigger budget.
“I think what is clear is that he’s going to request an enormous amount of money from the county and this letter must be a precursor for that request,” Norris-Weeks said.
She also challenged the idea that some cost overruns were foreseeable.
“The issues happened with the recount and you can’t predict there’s going to be three recounts,” NorrisWeeks said, referring to the state-mandated recounts in the close races for governor, U.S. senator and state agriculture commissioner.
Steve Vancore, a spokesman for the elections office, said the numbers in the memo don’t include the recount costs, which he said are still being tabulated.
Snipes was suspended from office by former Gov. Rick Scott, who appointed Antonacci in her place. Gov. Ron DeSantis did away with Snipes’ suspension and accepted her resignation. On Thursday, Snipes was at the county governmental center, thanking supporters and saying her name and dignity had been restored.
She said she hadn’t focused on what she could have been done better regarding the November elections. She did not return a phone call Friday seeking comment on Antonacci’s memo.