Republicans are raising the alarm over what’s happening in South Florida, as the margins of apparent Election Day victories for the GOP – followed by Democratic concessions – dwindle thanks to returns that continually trickle in from a deep blue county.
While Democrats and the mainstream media complain that Republicans want to disenfranchise thousands of voters, Republicans counter by pointing out a Broward County election supervisor’s known history of partisanship and electoral fraud.
Even left-leaning Politico has chronicled how the Broward County, Florida elections department have repeatedly violated the law: including court rulings that they improperly handled votes by mail and destroyed ballots in 2016 in violation of state and federal statute.
This time, things have gotten even worse. (Townhall)
Day 3 of the Broward & Palm Beach County Supervisors abject display of ineptitude. 102.141 4(b) details the process by which ballots shall be counted. This is not about ballot length, as Miami-Dade, the single largest county in the state did not have this problem. pic.twitter.com/zTs1rdGVg2
— Ryan Tyson (@ryan_tyson) November 9, 2018
By law, each county must report all vote-by-mail ballots they’ve tabulated within half an hour of polls closing. As other ballots remain uncounted, counties must offer regular, specific and public updates every 45 minutes until the process of counting is complete. This has not happened. At all. In fact, Broward officials have repeatedly been unable or unwilling to even say how many ballots remain to be tabulated — understandably leading to furious charges of dangerous and lawless incompetence, at best, and partisan manipulations or fraud at the worst. And as the tweet above notes, Broward (the worst offender) has no excuse to use as a crutch. Nearby Miami-Dade, home to more people, has a longer physical ballot, yet they managed to get this done in a timely fashion, in accordance with the state’s legal requirements. And GOP-heavy counties in the Panhandle did the same, despite getting hammered by a powerful hurricane just a few weeks prior to the election. Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been sounding the alarm for two days (Republicans have sued — read this), isn’t letting this go:
Under #Florida law county must upload by 7 p.m. day BEFORE election ALL early votes canvassed & tabulated by end of early voting & report results within 30 minutes of polls close
60 hours after that deadline only 1 of 67 counties is still counting early votes, #BrowardCounty pic.twitter.com/oP7HdpZcTk
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) November 9, 2018
A veteran elections watcher, effectively pushing back against critics who are accusing Rubio and others of fueling baseless conspiracy theories, reinforces the Senator’s sense of alarm:
I spend most of my spare time immersed in counting of votes, the mechanics of it, the analysis of it. There is no excuse or justification for what is currently going on right now in Broward Co, FL. Sometimes candidates whine about these things for no good reason. Not this time.
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) November 9, 2018
Again, the best case scenario here is that Broward officials — who have been slapped by courts for wrongfully destroying ballots and engaging in other misconduct and ineptitude in the past — are being outrageously evasive about their gross incompetence. That’s the charitable spin. For what it’s worth, Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review, a Florida transplant, believes both Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis likely have large enough cushions to withstand whatever is happening in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, assuming there aren’t tens of thousands of additional/alleged votes still lurking somewhere. Several signs suggest that there aren’t many ballots left in this circus:
This would mean, at the current ratio, that DeSantis could survive 93,801 more ballots being counted in Broward and Scott could survive 36,071. Are there that many left? It’s unclear because Broward is a disaster, run by a crook. But this suggests not: https://t.co/kHmkYQNpgU (4)
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 9, 2018
Dr. Snipes said Broward is done counting all votes except for military/overseas and provisional. Here’s the change in Broward’s reported votes since 4:30pm, as tracked by @ceostroff pic.twitter.com/jeXIvXzMot
— Alex Harris (@harrisalexc) November 9, 2018
AAN Staff
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