Politics/Opinions

Broward County, Florida: What a Mess

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Broward County, Florida: What a Mess

By J.M.D.

Once again, Broward County, Florida, has become the poster child for mismanaged elections. First, there was Miriam Oliphant, who was removed from office and replaced with Brenda Snipes in 2003. There has been no improvement in the handling of elections under Brenda Snipes, yet she continues to be reelected; she is, after all, a Democrat in a mostly Democratic county. She has been called incompetent and worse, and this year’s elections lean towards the former. Although she may be considered incompetent, she could not create this fiasco alone. There seem to be inherent competency issues throughout her office, or maybe she and her staff just turn a blinds eye to what is going on. Regardless of what goes on in her office, she is ultimately responsible.

The design of this year’s ballot, with the Senate race placed on the ballot in such a way as to apparently cause over twenty four thousand voters to miss it: was it deliberate to help Nelson in a heavily Democratic county or just plain stupidity? Had the ballot been properly configured, there may not have been needed a recount in the Senate race.

The destruction of ballots before they were legally allowed to be destroyed, as well as her actions during the 2016 Democratic primary may have been a mistake on her part, but certainly gave the impression that she favored Debbie Wassermann-Schultz over Tim Canova and without those paper ballots no one will never know the true vote tally.

And herein lies the problem: she is a Democrat, who are just as adept at fudging elections as the Republicans. If she were to be replaced by a Republican, chances are that person would do all things possible to help his or her party.

The process of free and fair elections is quite possibly the most important part of any democracy. Every vote must be counted and election officials must be open in their contact with the public. What is needed is to take away the ability of any political party from controlling the elections process in order to provide a sense that the office of supervisor of elections is not biased. Perhaps a law requiring that a candidate for supervisor of elections must be non-partisan and not have been a member of any political party for the previous five years. And as for Brenda Snipes, after the vote counting is complete, she should resign and be replaced by one who is truly non-partisan.

As of September 30 of this year, there were 324,233 voters in Broward County registered under No Party Affiliation, or about 27 percent of the voter rolls. I’m sure out of this group, a suitable replacement can be found.

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