Illegal Aliens and Felons to Vote; Illegally Destroyed Ballots
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Three statewide races in Florida are headed to a recount and all depend on results from a county whose supervisor of elections has a history of losing ballots and breaking laws by allowing illegal immigrants and felons to vote, as well as illegally destroying ballots.
Broward County supervisor of elections Brenda Snipes’ office has admitted “they don’t know” how many ballots there are still to count.Snipes’ latest failure to finalize Tuesday’s election returns days after the polls closed is also in violation of Florida law, which requires elections
officials to “report all early voting and all tabulated vote-by-mail
results to the Department of State within 30 minutes after the polls
close. Thereafter, the canvassing board shall report, with the exception
of provisional ballot results, updated precinct election results to the
department at least every 45 minutes until all results are completely
reported.”
This should alarm anyone hoping for fair and accurate election
returns, as Snipes’ history in Broward is checkered with numerous
examples of facilitating illegal voting practices.
In 2017, Dr. Snipes admitted in court that her office had allowed non-citizens and felons to vote and was particularly vulnerable ahead of major elections.
In 2012, a Broward elections official complained about
Snipes tendency to “find” additional ballots in close elections. Ilene
Lieberman, a Broward County Commissioner and Canvassing board member,
told the Miami CBS affiliate in 2012, “When the canvassing board
recessed on Saturday we were basically told there were between 150 and
165 ballots remained to be counted, that they had to double check, that
they hadn’t been counted before. And when we came back on Monday the
report showed 963 new ballots.”
Snipes also presided over a “phantom voting district” of 2000 voters who were using illegal addresses, many of them at a UPS Store, claimed as their places of residence.
Republican Party officials sued Snipes’ office in 2016 over the illegal counting of 180,000 mail in ballots, she admitted that
she didn’t know the meaning of the word “canvassing.” Snipes’ office
had been opening ballots illegally, without the legally required
participation of other members of the canvasing board.
But Snipes hasn’t just been accused of malfeasance from Republicans.
A 2016 Democratic Congressional candidate, Tim Canova, challenged the
results of his loss to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in court, only to have
Snipes’ office illegally destroy the ballots, preventing additional inspection.
Medical Marijuana backers NORML sued
Snipes office in 2016 after the constitutional initiative to
decriminalize marijuana was left off of some Broward County ballots.
Lawyer John Morgan, who endorsed Andrew Gillum in this year’s Governor’s
race, accused Snipes of doing it intentionally.
Morgain marveled, “Broward County was our best county last time. And I don’t believe in accidents.”
Snipes was originally appointed to her office by Republican Governor Jeb Bush in 2003, after her predecessor was removed from office for
gross mismanagement. A former school administrator and principal,
Snipes won election in 2004 and has been successfully been re-elected by
Broward County voters every four years, most recently in a 2016
primary, where she received 76% of the 122,782 votes cast.
Even that electoral win was not without controversy, however, as
Snipes office inadvertently released the results of the elections 30
minutes before polls officially closed.
According to Florida law,
“Any supervisor of elections, deputy supervisor of elections,
canvassing board member, election board member, or election employee who
releases the results of any election prior to the closing of the polls
in that county on election day commits a felony of the third degree.”
Despite the Florida Secretary of State asking the Broward County Sherriff and
State Attorney for an investigation, like other election-related crimes
in Broward County, however, that also went unpunished
Eric Eggers is the research director at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and the author of the new book Fraud: How the Left Plans to Steal the Next Election.
