Tipsheet

Yes, Florida Elections Have Had Their Moments, Like 200,000 Non-Citizens Possibly Voting In 2012

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  November 12, 2018 1:50 PM

***This post has been updated***

The ballot counting in Florida elections is a shambles. The gubernatorial race is a shambles. The agricultural commissioner’s race is a shambles. And the Senate race is a shambles. We’re all heading for recounts in these races—and the two counties that keep chipping away at GOP vote totals, Broward and Palm Beach, are the most liberal in the state. They’ve violated state law by not posting regular updates on ballots left outstanding. 

A judge recently ruled that the counties violated public records laws—and the whole ballot counting process has been done in secret. So, yes, it’s right that Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate who has declared victory, recently filed a lawsuit over this nonsense. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has also joined the lawsuit.  

Broward County’s elections supervisor, Brenda Snipes, can't do her job. She’s destroyed congressional ballots in 2016, has forgotten to add amendments to ballots, and there are serial issues with mail-in ballots (via Miami Herald):

Following a court ruling in May that Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes had illegally destroyed ballots from a 2016 congressional race, the governor’s office announced the Florida Department of State would send election experts to Snipes’ office during this year’s election “to ensure that all laws are followed” and “to observe the administration of the election.”

[…]

Even beyond her own reprimand for authorizing the destruction of ballots, Snipes cannot deny the department’s patchy track record. In 2016, early voting results for Broward were posted a half hour before polls closed, in violation of election law. Her office was sued unsuccessfully because a constitutional amendment was missing from some mail-in ballots. The electronic system used by the county was also later found to have been targeted by Russian government hackers — although it’s unclear whether that affected results and had nothing to do with the early posting.

On multiple occasions, there have been problems with printing mail ballots. And in the August primaries, Broward was the last county to post election results. The department cited reasons from unexpected recounts, delayed jump drive delivery — rumor was they were temporarily lost — to a late influx of mail-in ballots that were still being counted the next day, leaving the results of several races unclear .

“We have consistently been the bottom of the barrel getting our voting results in,” Broward County Commissioner Nan Rich said at a September meeting to discuss how to prevent future delays in posting results. “I don’t want to be 67th in 67 counties again in voting.”

To boot, Broward and Palm Beach decided they were going to just ignore the court order for all public information requests concerning outstanding ballots. Oh, and there’s this disturbing tidbit Florida State University College of Law Professor Michael Morley found within the documents of Scott’s lawsuit:

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Michael Morley, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, noted something from the documents of the Scott lawsuit that should raise anyone’s eyebrows. Okay—well maybe not for Democrats because they will choose to ignore it. 

There is evidence of wrongdoing—but this is all conspiracy talk as far as the liberal media is concerned. Yet, these same jokers said, without evidence, that the Russians hacked our election. It’s madness. 

Oh, these antics aren't anything new. In 2012, 200,000 non-citizens might have voted in the state's elections (via NBC Miami):

Florida officials are now saying that nearly 200,000 registered voters may not be U.S. citizens.

Earlier in the week, state election officials announced they had identified more than 2,600 people who are in Florida legally but ineligible to vote.

The Department of State is asking county election officials to verify the information. Election supervisors are contacting voters and if someone is not a citizen, their name will be dropped from the voter rolls.

But an initial list drawn up by the state — and not widely released — shows that a comparison of voter lists and driver's license information turned up a list of nearly 182,000 people who may not be U.S. citizens.

[…]

State officials, however, note that some of those on list may have become citizens after first getting their driver's licenses. Still, the decision to screen the voter rolls for non-citizens could result in tens of thousands voters being dropped in the middle of a critical election year.

[…]

The state database is supposed to check the names of registered voters against other databases, including ones that contain the names of people who have died and people who have been sent to prison.

Driver's license numbers had been used to verify the identity of someone who had registered to vote but apparently the state was not checking citizenship status prior to last year. The state does not give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, but it does grant them to legal visitors.

Cate said the list of 182,000 people was drawn up by checking first and last names, date of birth and either a driver's license number, a Social Security number or an address. Most of the matches had identical driver's license numbers, names and birthdates. A state document shows that out of the nearly 182,000 identified that more than 172,000 were active voters, meaning they had cast ballots in recent elections or registered recently.

[…]

Republican Party of Florida chairman Lenny Curry defended the state push.

"To now learn that thousands of illegal votes could be cast across our state is chilling and threatens the confidence people need to have in our elections," Curry said in a statement." Any amount of fraud or illegality in this system is too much."

In 2018, there's still questions of credibility concerning Palm Beach and Broward counties since the latter recently mixed rejected provisional ballots in with good ones. 

***

Editor's Note and Apology: Folks, mistakes happen. When they do, we try to correct them as soon as possible. In the original post, I made the error of thinking the 200,000 non-citizens figure was for the 2018 cycle. It was actually for 2012. The post has been updated and corrected. We sincerely apologize for stepping on the rake on this one.