Posted on November 19, 2018

Florida Election Boss Says Racism Was ‘Probably a Factor’ in the Backlash She and Her Office Faced During the Recounts

Leah Simpson, Daily Mail and Associated Press, November 19, 2018

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes thinks racism was ‘probably’ a factor in the backlash against her for the South Florida office missing Thursday’s recount deadline in a Senate race.

As about two dozen protesters stood outside her headquarters Friday, including Bikers For Trump, Snipes, who is black, admitted she thought the criticism may have been amplified because of her race.

When asked specifically if she believed her heritage could be playing a part in the hostile response she declined to elaborate but told the Guardian, ‘Probably. Probably’.

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‘It was intentional. They found 760 votes in favor of us. She knew if she waited past the deadline, they wouldn’t be counted,’ 60-year-old realtor Jody Steinlauf told the publication. Steinlauf seemed to think the incident was part of a wider Democratic plan and linked it to the investigation into Russian meddling in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

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State officials ordered a manual recount after a machine recount showed less votes in the county than the total number of votes reported to the state on November 10.

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The Broward Supervisor of Elections website reported 676,706 votes had been counted in Broward in the US Senate race, with the vast majority going to Nelson over Scott, but 24,763 more votes had been logged for the governor’s race, with 701,469 reported at that time, according to the Miami Herald.

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On Friday, election workers in all 67 counties began recounting by hand about 93,000 ballots that were not recorded by voting machines. Many counties finished up the Senate recount on the first day. All results are supposed to be turned in by Sunday at noon. State officials will officially certify the totals next week.

But Florida’s beleaguered Broward county has made yet another election blunder after it was revealed that officials accidentally mixed in ballots from the Senate race into the recount for state’s Commissioner of Agriculture as Florida.

Early on Saturday, the recount of 22,000 ballots came to an abrupt stop when officials noticed volunteers had mixed 47 manila envelopes from Friday’s Senate recount in with those to be hand counted for the commissioner race, Fox News reported.

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‘The ballots are in the building. The ballots are in this building. There would be nowhere else for them to be. But they are misfiled in this building.’

Larry Davis, a Democratic attorney who is representing agriculture commissioner candidate Nikki Fried, took the elections supervisor to task over the missing ballots in her race against Republican candidate Matt Caldwell.

‘Dr Snipes, with all due respect to you and your office, the ballots being in the building doesn’t get them counted,’ Davis said.