Whoops! Brenda Snipes' office mixed bad provisional ballots with good ones

[Jose Garcia]

Source: The Miami Herald

Broward’s elections supervisor accidentally mixed more than a dozen rejected ballots with nearly 200 valid ones, a circumstance that is unlikely to help Brenda Snipes push back against Republican allegations of incompetence.

The mistake — for which no one had a solution Friday night — was discovered after Snipes agreed to present 205 provisional ballots to the Broward County canvassing board for inspection. She had initially intended to handle the ballots administratively, but agreed to present them to the canvassing board after Republican attorneys objected.

“We have found no clear authority controlling the situation faced by the board,” said Broward County Attorney Andrew Meyers.

On Election Day, Broward County collected more than 600 provisional ballots. The vast majority were declared invalid by the county’s canvassing board judges for reasons ranging from registering to vote too late to previously voting to voting at the wrong precinct.

Read more: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article221452655.html

[DURHAM D]

1. Where I live a provisional ballot is given to a voter

who is at the wrong precinct. What's the problem?

[marylandblue]

2. Most of the provisional ballots were determined to be invalid

But she comingled some invalid ballots with some valid ones, with no way to separate them. So now the whole group in question.

[lark]

16. I swear to God she's either the most incompetent person ever or a repug mole.

I'm leaning towards repug mole because no person could be in her position this long (since 2000 or before) and fuck up this badly. Well, there goes my hope for Nelson, she's backstabbed him good, the fucking asshole.

[marylandblue]

17. She been there since 2003

Appointed to replace the previous supervisor who was herself summarily fired for mismanagement. So long history of problems. But it's an elected position and she managed to hold.on through several elections. I wonder we should be looking at those?

[ChiTownDenny]

19. Clarification...

It's an appointed position. JEB! appointed her.

[brooklynite]

20. Meh appointed here to fill a vacancy...

Since then, she’s been elected.

[marylandblue]

21. According this, it's an elected position

But the governor replaced her predecessor for mishandling ballots.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wtsp.com/amp/article%3fsection=news&subsection=politics&topic=elections&headline=who-is-brenda-snipes-the-broward-county-supervisor-of-elections&contentId=67-612946611

[ChiTownDenny]

22. Correct.

JEB! appointed her to replace the other incompetent Supervisor. Since the she has been re-elected to office.

[Glorfindel]

3. It's Florida. That's the problem.

Evidently, there is no solution.

[marylandblue]

6. Snipes is incompetent, so it's even worse

I did some googling, she has had many screwups before. She doesn't understand election laws and procedures. She got away with it before because none of them were as an important as this one.

[Perseus]

10. Are you sure she is incompetent?

I bet republicans think she is very competent.

I wonder if this "incompetency" is not part of the plan.

[marylandblue]

12. Well just looking at some prior mishaps, they probably didn't affect outcome

But should not have happened anyway.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-who-is-brenda-snipes-2

[lark]

24. Personally putting rejected ballots in the same bin as accepted is incompetence.

Not marking the rejected ballots is incompetence. Accepting a confusing ballot design, incompetence, putting polling places behind locked gates, incompetence. So either she personally is incompetent or she had incompetent backstabbing help, one of the 2. But as the supervisor, if she has incompetent staff, isn't that still her responsibility?

[brush]

26. Seems to be a campaign by the repugs to paint her as incompetent.

Wonder if she personally co-mingled the ballots in question or was it someone on staff in the rush and confusion to meet the artificial deadline coming from the repug governor's suit?

It would be best to just let them count all of the votes without the national and statewide pressure coming from trump, the governor and the Florida media.

What difference does it make if it takes a couple of more days to count the votes as long as they are all counted?

It's pretty clear repugs always want to cut off voting, in other words, disenfranchise voters who might vote against them.

[lark]

29. Your logic is correct.

Sorry she or her staff or the post office totally fucked up, voters voted with the expectation of their votes counting and they should be counted, period the end. FL judges supported the Gore v Bush recount, it was SCOTUS that stopped the counting and declared GW president. That is what I'm worried about this time as well because SCOTUS is more right wing than ever with the installation of Kavarape. If SCOTUS doesn't fuck this up, we have a chance of getting at least the Senate seat & I'm praying for governor as well.

[Maeve]

4. Yes, and the BOE is supposed to count only the votes that would be applicable in the correct precinc

For instance, if the person voted for a local candidate that would not actually be theirs, that shouldn't count...but a state-wide office vote should. That is how it's supposed to work in Ohio, anyway. However, different states have different laws and some toss misplaced voters.

[Honeycombe8]

5. You've gotta be kidding.

How did that happen? It's simple...a rejected ballot gets tossed into bucket #1, an approved ballot goes into bucket #2.

It's just 200 ballots. Can't they flip through and check for rejections? I suppose they're stamped "rejected"?

[marylandblue]

8. Apparently the rejected ballots were not marked

And Snipes appears to be an incompetent to administer elections. Her career is over.

[Honeycombe8]

11. I should hope so. It puts a cloud on the recount. This seems like a simple....

although time consuming, task. They need to get some paralegals in there to do it. (I'm a retired paralegal...

[brush]

31. Let's not jump to conclusions. Who benefits from her being painted as incompetent?

The repugs of course, who always want to rush to not count votes when they think they're ahead.

So a couple hundred votes out of hundreds of thousands get co-mingled in the pressure put on staff by a suit from the repug governor and trump and local media who wants to stop a recount.

And she just happens to be a black woman—hummm—it is the South so you have to wonder if there's also the racial element going on?

Think about who this benefits from all this uproar. It's sure not the Democratic candidates.

[marylandblue]

32. I still think she is incompetent even if it works out for Republicans this time

There are news articles online from years ago about her mistakes.

At this point, the courts need to take over to preserve the integrity of the election.

[brush]

34. Do you actually trust the courts in that deep south state to be impartial?

That will just guarantee a repug win.

Don't fall for the repug hype to put pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry in the most populous county—also the county with the most POC votes.

Just take the time to count all the votes, not just the ones the repugs want counted.

[marylandblue]

36. I don't trust her either way, whatever she does will be criticized by the losing side

We need a transparent process that everyone can have confidence in. So far, she has resisted that and a court rightly stopped her.

I'm not sure, but I think the Florida Supreme Court is pretty reasonable.

[brush]

38. Do you live in the south?

I mean really? Remember what happened when the courts took over in Florida in 2000.

The recount was stopped and we got W Bush as president.

Repug appointed judges will not be impartial.

[marylandblue]

40. In 2000, the Florida Supreme Court made the right decision, and the SCOTUS killed it.

But if all we have is a bad Election Supervisor and bad courts, we are screwed either way. The election process will be delegitimized further, allowing Trump to contest future election losses by tweet. Eventually people will stop caring and the fascists will win.

[brush]

41. It's Florida, lots of screw ups there. The repugs trying to stop the vote count is not helping.

What difference if it takes a few more days to count all the votes.

It was reported yesterday that boxes of ballots were found in the shutdown post office where the maga-bomber sent his bombs through.

A court ordered the ballots not to be counted so those voters were disenfranchised. IMO it's best to keep the courts out of it if possible because they always seem to favor the repugs.

[cos dem]

9. Just a guess, but the signature page and ballot may be separated at that point.

Here in Colorado, you sign the outer envelope that contains your ballot. You don't sign the ballot itself.
I would assume that a valid/invalid determination would be made on the outer envelope. If it's invalid, then the envelope should never be open. However, if someone opens it and places the ballot with other accepted ones, then there's no way to go back and find the ballots that came in the invalid envelopes.

[Honeycombe8]

13. I've never used, or seen, a mail-in ballot.

I would never have guessed that the voter name would not be on the ballot itself. Maybe that's to protect privilege of how a person voted? If that's the way it is in FL, Houston we have a problem.

[cos dem]

15. I think you misinterpreted what I said.

Your name is NOT on the ballot. It is only on the envelope. The idea is that the envelope and ballot are intentionally separated after they are opened (presumably with non-partisan and partisan observers) so that yes, the secrecy of your ballot is maintained (there's also an unmarked inner sleeve that makes this easier to maintain).

So, once you have a stack of actual ballots, there is no way to determine who's ballot is who's. You also have a stack of empty envelopes with names and signatures, but that doesn't do you any good either.

I'm surmising most of this. I've never actually seen it in action, but having used mail-in ballots for several years, it seems that this, or something very similar, is the intended process.

[Honeycombe8]

25. Yes, I understood. That's what I was speaking about. Once separated, there is a problem...

in correcting any ballots that were mistakenly thrown into the "verified" bucket, when they were rejected in actuality.

[not_the_one]

33. We have got to get over this obsession

with casting a "secret" ballot. I WANT people to know who I support, and I would like to know who others supported. It doesn't have to be published, but it sure doesn't have to be "secret".

I want to know who to support by giving them my business, or not. Bottom line, the dollar speaks with meaning.

I understand that in the past one could be discriminated, even punished, for who they voted for. But that is no longer the case. If it happens, take their ass to court. There are agencies that will assist you in doing so.

I believe that, in general, ANYTIME secrecy is part of ANY process, the door is opened to all sorts of manipulations.

Secrecy should be expected, even assumed, when dealing with sensitive medical information, or something of that nature. But even in that case, it should be illegal for the insurance companies to discriminate because of it.

Other than medical, national security or planning a military attack during war, there should be no secrecy.

Especially in politics. No reports that we the voters can't see. No agreements or compromises made without our knowing about it.

After all, WE are footing the bill for all of it.

[marylandblue]

37. Do you really want asshole neighbors, employers, and neonazis knowing who you voted for?

[cos dem]

39. I don't agree with this at all.

Ballot secrecy is fundamental to democracy.

You say "take them to court". How is that going to work when the courts are stacked with partisans? It's bad enough that partisan courts can play games the way they do now.

You really do not have any right to know how another individual votes, if that person doesn't want you to know. If we all voted and then shut up about it, we might be better off. I certainly know plenty of people who are fine to interact with, unless the conversation veers into politics. Then they become insufferable.

Actually, I do agree with your last statement. Secrecy in a democratic government should be a rarity. However, privacy of the individual must be the norm. The vote belongs to the individual, not the government.

[The Mouth]

42. In the first democracy viotes were public

In Athens.

I have zero problem with voting in public.

[former9thward]

50. Then time travel to 400 BC Athens.

Hope you are happy there. Here we have a secret ballot.

[Mr.Bill]

43. That is exactly how it is done in California. n/t

[rzemanfl]

28. I think you are correct. n/t

[bearsfootball516]

7. I don't think it was malicious, but it was an idiotic nonetheless.

She's not doing a very good job of beating the allegations that she's incompetent, at the moment.

[PatSeg]

14. Two decades of incompetence in Florida

Perhaps they need to have mandatory federal overseers during every upcoming election until they learn how it is done. This is ridiculous, like watching the same bad movie over and over again.

[Farmer-Rick]

18. It just sounds like routine RepubliCON ballot counting

We're just not use to such incompetence from Dems.

Remember the vote counting for W and Walker? Talk about incompetence. I never saw such blatant vote rigging as in Ohio with a RepubliCON SoS that sent votes counts to TN then declared W the winner.

[Honeycombe8]

27. No one talks about it, but I remember the fraud that the Ohio SOS did...

in that election. I seem to recall that they actually threw away a bunch of ballots...and found some in the car of the head of a poll workers group (whatever that job title is), that he hadn't turned in to be counted.

It was outrageous.

I'm glad to see the Dems going to the mat this time, to ensure there is an accurate count of all votes. I support going to court if we have to. The Repubs count on Democrats not going to the mat, IMO, and that is why they do this stuff.

[LovingA2andMI]

23. Well, there goes the Recount....

Thanks for Snipes. The GOPers are going to ride this major mistake to the bank in the Courts to stop any recount.

[obamanut2012]

45. wrong

[elmac]

30. yaaaas

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=6j39xi" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"></a>

[Zackr]

35. Count them all

If I was the judge I would say, “count them all and add an asterisk saying +/- 20 votes. If that potential difference is significant at the conclusion of the recount then we’ll talk again “

[Mr.Bill]

44. Ever get the wrong mail inyour mailbox?

We all have. It doesn't mean your postmaster is an idiot or a criminal. It means your letter carrier made a mistake. Mistakes will happen in any process involving human beings.

[totodeinhere]

47. This mistake is much more improtant than a letter carrier putting a letter in the wrong box.

Elections are the very core of our democracy. Mistakes like this one should not be made.

[Mr.Bill]

48. Of course they shouldn't.

But as long as human beings are involved, mistakes will happen.

[totodeinhere]

46. With something this important how can they make a stupid mistake like that?

It's inexcusable. All this does is give the Republicans ammunition for their false claims that voter fraud is being committed by election officials.

[MichMan]

49. Ask the voters who keep re electing her

This is not the first time she has screwed up

[PoliticAverse]

51. "She's simply incompetent."...

From: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-editorial-snipes-20181110-story.html

Snipes is not someone who would manufacture boxes of ballots to throw an election.

She’s simply incompetent.

She has a track record of mistakes and failing to own up to them.

She’s long been willing to settle for coming in last in reporting elections results.