Judges rule in favor of Scott election lawsuits

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Senate who currently leads Democratic opponent Sen. Bill Nelson by 15,000 votes, has won his first lawsuit against Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher. As ballots in the gubernatorial and Senate races head to a recount, Scott sued Bucher Thursday night for refusing to allow official party and campaign representatives into the ballot counting area, and having staff members determine a voter’s intent without review by the county canvassing board.

On Friday, West Palm Beach Circuit Court Judge Krista Marx granted an injunction ordering Bucher to submit “over-voted” and “under-voted” absentee ballots to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board for public review of each vote before they are counted.

In a machine recount, all completed ballots are re-fed through ballot-counting machines to try to confirm the original, unofficial counts.

The machines must first be re-tested and re-calibrated to read and separate ballots with apparent over-votes, that is, the ballots in which the machines read that the voter may have selected more than one candidate, and undervotes, in which the machine does not register a vote on the ballot. The testing of the machines has to be done in public.

The lawsuit against Bucher accused her office of withholding some of the over-voted and under-voted absentee ballots from the county canvassing board, even though Florida law dictates that only a canvassing board is allowed to determine “all valid votes” from over-votes or under-votes.

Scott also filed a lawsuit against Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes on Thursday evening, alleging that her office is hiding information about the number of ballots left to be counted. Broward County Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ordered the immediate release of voter information from Snipes, ruling in Scott’s favor.

Nelson filed a lawsuit Friday morning asking that the deadline for local election officials to file preliminary unofficial vote totals to the state be extended past noon Saturday, a deadline dictated by Florida law.

Author: CBS News

Do you see a typo or an error? Let us know</s>The Florida Democratic Party accused the Republican candidate for state Agriculture Commissioner, Matt Caldwell, of trying to interfere with legal ballot counting, as the North Fort Myers Republican awaits a hearing on a request to halt counting absentee ballots received after voting hours ended.

"Florida is not a banana republic and Matt Caldwell is not a third world dictator," said Party Executive Director Juan Penalosa, in a one-paragraph statement released Saturday.

"In America we don't allow politicians to manipulate the courts or government agencies to interfere with legal elections that they are losing," Penalosa said.

Caldwell and his campaign committee filed suit Friday against beleaguered Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes seeking to stop the counting of ballots that were not in hand when the polls closed.

More: Key dates, terms for Florida’s recount decisions on governor, Senate races

More: Florida recounts: Hand recount vs. machine recount and other things to know

Caldwell Campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez released the following statement Saturday:

“Brenda Snipes continues to believe she is above the law. Our process server has tried to deliver our lawsuit both last night and again this morning, a period of more than 14 hours, but Snipes refuses to be served. Her disregard for Florida voters and the integrity of this election is illegal and shameful.”

Caldwell thought he had edged out a victory in the agricultural commissioner race Tuesday night when he had about a 40,000 vote lead over Democratic candidate Nikki Fried.

But the latest vote count shows Caldwell trailing Fried by 4,485 votes, as of Saturday morning. The difference between the candidates is .06 percent, signaling an automatic recount and possibly a manual recount, if the machine count narrows the margin to 0.025 percent.

Judge Raag Singhal did not immediately schedule a hearing on Caldwell's request to stop counting absentee ballots received after the polls closed. No hearing time has been entered on the docket for the case and Caldwell's attorneys did not immediately respond to an email request for information on scheduling a hearing on the emergency request.

More: Thousands of provisional ballots could flip Florida races now too close to call

The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections’ office must provide copies of duplicate ballots to the Scott campaign by noon.

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher requested an emergency hearing in a lawsuit brought by the Scott campaign for copies of damaged and duplicate ballots. On Friday, the judge overseeing the suit, Krista Marx, ordered Bucher to provide the campaign the ballots by 10 a.m. Saturday.

But late Friday Bucher filed a motion for reconsideration. During the hearing, Bucher said it would take two to three days for them to find and provide duplicate ballots because they’ve already been mixed in with regular ballots.

Marx told Scott’s attorneys during the hearing that she knew Bucher was not going to make the noon deadline, but expected Bucher to comply with the order since Palm Beach County has already completed counting ballots.

Scott’s attorney, Aliette Rodz, said the hearing should have never taken place and Bucher should have done more to find the ballots under the initial deadline.

Bucher declined to talk with reporters, saying the office had work to get done. As she walked out of the hearing, a small group of protesters began to yell at her, calling her a “criminal.” Both a spokeswoman for the Scott campaign and the Republican National Committee stood next to the protesters.</s>Local Democratic officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida are recklessly violating state law in what may be an attempt to overturn the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections for governor and the U.S. Senate in the Sunshine State.

This looks like a repeat of the actions in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, when Democratic officials ignored state election laws – and were slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision.

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda C. Snipes said Tuesday night that 634,000 votes had been cast in the county. But by Thursday night, Snipes was claiming 712,840 ballots had been cast.

The effect of these newly discovered votes that inexplicably appeared long after they should have been counted shrunk the leads of Republicans Gov. Rick Scott in the Senate race and former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis in the gubernatorial contest.

Late Tuesday night Scott was up roughly 57,000 votes in his race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. By Friday afternoon, Scott’s lead had declined dramatically to about 15,000 votes.

Late Tuesday night DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in the gubernatorial race by 75,000 votes. But Friday afternoon DeSantis was ahead by less than half that – about 36,000 votes.

Broward County officials blatantly disregarded the Florida law requiring that all vote-by-mail and absentee ballots be accounted for within 30 minutes of the polls closing.

Though the county’s voting locations closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Snipes said Friday that she still didn’t know how many ballots remain to be processed. Nor could she say how many provisional, military or mismarked ballots she had in her possession.

Mysteriously, over 70,000 ballots have been counted since Tuesday night with apparently no one knowing how many more are still to come.

In addition, at least one ballot box for provisional votes was left unattended at a polling place – a school where it was discovered days after the election. The box was locked but not sealed, and could have been tampered with or stuffed. Could there be others?

Snipes then refused to allow Republican officials to inspect all ballots before they are submitted to the Canvassing Board. And she refused other requests for public records that should be available under Florida’s expansive “sunshine laws,” drawing a sharp rebuke from a judge late Friday afternoon.

In response to Republican lawsuits, Florida state Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ruled Friday that “there has been a violation of the Florida constitution” and the state’s public records act by Broward County officials. The judge sided with Scott and ordered that Republicans should be granted “immediate access” to information they have requested about ballots Broward County.

There are also problems in next-door Palm Beach County.

On Wednesday morning, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher stopped filing updates of the vote count with the Florida Department of State as required by law. The law mandates that she report every 45 minutes until all the election results are in.

Instead, Bucher dropped news of the 15,000 surprise ballots she’s counted since Tuesday night at any time she chose.

Besides telling the state to get lost, Bucher is also refusing to allow designated official political party representatives into the ballot counting area. She’s kept them isolated behind a glass wall where they can’t see and hear all that’s going on – yet another violation of Florida election law.

Even more troubling, Bucher has copied vote-by-mail ballots that she claims are damaged, but without allowing witnesses to observe the process as required by Florida law. In fact, she explicitly denied requests for witnesses to see her staff at work.

As election supervisor, Bucher also assumed the power to determine what constitutes a “valid vote.” Under Florida law, she doesn’t have that authority. She can only refer questionable ballots to the county’s bipartisan Canvassing Board.

This is not the first time these two Board of Election supervisors have shown contempt for their official responsibilities under Florida law, especially Snipes in Broward County.

In 2012 Snipes was criticized for absentee ballots that never arrived, balky scanners that didn’t work, slow reporting and mounds of ballots that showed up long after Election Day.

In 2014 Snipes demonstrated such incompetence that even fellow Democrats complained her office made it difficult for people to vote.

In 2016 Snipes allowed her employees to campaign on county time, violated state law by posting election results half an hour before the polls closed and was sued for leaving amendments off the ballots.

A judge also ruled that Snipes’ office violated state and federal laws by illegally destroying ballots. But the ruling regarding her action illegally obliterating evidence two years ago did not come down until this year.

In 2017, accusations of ballot stuffing swirled around Snipes’ office during local elections. She even admitted that ineligible voters who were on the rolls and had voted.

This year Snipes has drawn more fire. It was revealed that her office broke Florida law earlier this election season by opening ballots in private without observers present (maybe a trick she learned from Bucher).

Then after people complained they didn’t get their absentee ballots, it turned out that Snipes failed to notify some voters that their right to cast an absentee ballot had expired. She blamed it on not having enough funds to mail notifications. Maybe that was because she wasted her budget by sending some voters ballots with duplicate pages.

This may all be rank incompetence, but perhaps these actions by two Democratic election officials are a smokescreen for something worse – a deliberate attempt to overturn the Florida election results.

Fortunately, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blew the whistle and the Scott campaign, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee have rushed to the scene of the possible crime and filed lawsuits to ensure that voters – not Democratic officials – pick the next governor and U.S. senator in Florida.

There may be a basis for the U.S. Justice Department to intervene and investigate this troubling situation in Broward and Palm Beach counties to answer the obvious question:

Are Democratic elections officials deliberately breaking the law and playing games to delay everything just long enough so they can create just the number of ballots needed to overturn the election results to install Gillum as governor and keep Nelson in the Senate?

That’s the kind of behavior you expect in Third World banana republics – not true great democracies, and certainly not the United States.

Let’s hope it’s not too late and that any election fraud in Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida can be reversed.</s>Broward and Palm Beach County elections officials were still counting votes on Thursday morning, and questions continued about why more than 24,000 people voted for governor but not Senate in Broward.

The elections office counted 22,000 ballots Wednesday, continuing late into the night. In total, more than 695,700 Broward ballots were counted by 1 a.m. Thursday.

Fred Bellis, elections operations coordinator, said the office would continue to count ballots Thursday after breaking for a few hours overnight to give employees some rest.

With close margins in the U.S. Senate, agricultural commissioner, and governor races, large numbers of uncounted ballots in the Democratic heavy Broward could make a difference in whether or not those races lead to a recount.

Palm Beach County had also not finished counting mail-in vote results Thursday morning, according to the Florida Division of Election website. Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Under Florida law, a machine recount is conducted when the margin of victory is 0.5 percent or less. If the margin is 0.25 percent or less after the machine recount, a manual recount is conducted. The U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner races are both within in a recount. The difference in the gubernatorial candidates Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum was .52 percent Thursday morning.

Both parties on Wednesday had lawyers at the supervisor’s voting equipment center in Lauderhill.

The Broward elections office plans to review provisional ballots at 5 p.m. Thursday and have first unofficial results by 1 p.m. Friday. Provisional ballots are given to voters whose eligibility can not be determined at the polls. g

Of the Broward ballots already counted, more than 24,000 people voted for a governor candidate but didn’t vote for a Senate candidate, according to county results Thursday morning.

More than 690,000 people voted for governor in Broward in Tuesday’s election, while more than 665,000 voters cast ballots for Senate, preliminary county election results show.

The difference was nearly even between the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Gillum received more than 10,200 votes than Nelson, while DeSantis also received more than 10,400 votes than Scott.

Some voters said that they don’t remember seeing the Senate race on their ballots or that they almost missed it.

For the midterms, Broward’s discrepancy among the number of votes wasn’t just in the Senate and governor races.

More people in Broward voted for the state’s commissioner of agriculture, chief financial officer and attorney general positions than they did for the Senate, according to the preliminary county results.

There is a caveat: The state data released Thursday did not include votes for write-in candidates for Senate. In the largest counties, that could affect the differences by as many as 2,000 total votes.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.</s>PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his opponent in the midterm election race for a Senate seat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson have pending cases alleging ballots were mishandled.

In one of Scott's lawsuits, Palm Beach County supervisor of elections' was unable to meet her 7 p.m. Friday deadline to provide ballot information and she was requesting an emergency hearing.

Meanwhile, Scott's campaign released a statement saying Bucher was refusing to comply with the court order "to submit overvotes and undervotes to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board for review."

The Palm Beach canvassing board began reviewing ballots at 10 a.m., and the Palm Beach Post reported the process continued on Friday night. Bucher also has a 12 p.m. Saturday deadline to submit unofficial midterm election results.

Nelson's campaign and and the Democratic Executive Committee of Florida filed a lawsuit against Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner over a "complete lack of uniformity" in the handling of vote-by-mail ballots and the signature matching process that is used to validate them. Nelson wants those ballots to count.

"This entirely standardless, inconsistent, and unreliable signature matching process, which has a disparate impact on People of Color and young, first time voters, violates the prohibition against undue burdens on the right to vote," the lawsuit says.

Former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Palm Beach Gardens, a Democrat, reported on Twitter to Politico's Marc Caputo that his ballot was not counted because of an "invalid signature" match.

"Must overhaul these ridiculous barriers to voting," Murphy wrote.</s>Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) accuses Democrats of trying to "steal the election" and saying there is rampant fraud in Broward and Palm Beach counties.</s>UPDATE: Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher has requested an emergency hearing.

According to the court order, the hearing is set for Saturday at 8:30 a.m.

The deadline for turning in any duplicates or damaged ballots that were thrown out without going to the canvassing board is set for Saturday no later than 10 a.m., which Bucher filed for an extension.

RELATED: Full Election results | Latest news on Tuesday's election | Gov. Rick Scott seeks state probe, lawsuit over ballots | Trump says Palm Beach, Broward counties have "horrible history"

Palm Beach County is in the national spotlight after allegations of voter fraud, and after Governor Rick Scott filed a lawsuit against election bosses in Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

There was an emergency hearing inside Palm Beach County Circuit Court Friday morning, as the drama surrounding the razor-thin race between Governor Scott and Senator Bill Nelson heats up.

“What we need to have is a proper and accurate election,” said Aliette Rodz, counsel for the plaintiff.

The Governor stood outside the governor’s mansion Thursday night and announced a lawsuit against Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher and Broward County Supervisor Brenda Snipes.

“Every Floridian should be concerned there may be rampant fraud happening in Palm Beach and Broward Counties,” Scott said.

Judge Krista Marx granted a request by the Democratic Party of Florida to receive a list of everyone who cast a provisional ballot by 4 p.m. Friday. She also rejected a request to extend the provisional ballot deadline, which expired Thursday evening. The judge said she was not convinced she has the jurisdiction to do so, and that it would basically be a fishing expedition.

Attorneys representing Governor Scott also called into question the county’s practices. Judge Marx raised concern after Bucher’s attorney admitted her staff was making decisions about over and under voted ballots that did not go in front of the canvassing board.

“I’m really puzzled if that’s the practice now that some staff member is making that determination and not the canvassing board, that’s troubling,” Marx said.

Marx ordered any duplicates or damaged ballots that were thrown out without going to the canvassing board now must go to them. She set a deadline for 10 a.m. Saturday.

“I think it’s fair, I think she made a fair ruling,” Rodz said.</s>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP/WSVN) — Gov. Rick Scott’s Senate campaign filed two separate lawsuits against the Broward and Palm Beach county elections supervisors concerning the way they are handling the midterm elections’ ballot counts.

Scott’s campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee filed a lawsuit late Thursday demanding that Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes be ordered to turn over several records detailing the counting and collection of ballots cast in Tuesday’s election. They are seeking an emergency hearing as the votes must be certified by noon Saturday.

The lawsuit was filed about the same time Scott ordered state law enforcement officials to investigate the Broward and Palm Beach voting operation.

Scott has a narrow lead over incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and the race may be headed to a recount. His lead narrowed as final ballots in heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties were counted Wednesday and Thursday.

No one answered at Snipes’ office late Thursday. Nelson campaign spokesman Dan McLaughlin issued a statement saying that all votes should be counted accurately and that Scott’s action “appears to be politically motivated and borne out of desperation.”

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>Recently, my wife and I received the opportunity to receive absentee ballots for the upcoming elections. We accepted the offer and shortly after received the mid-term ballots.

While filling out the ballots, we noticed that there is a glaring flaw in this way of voting. Nowhere on the forms do they ask for any form of personal identification. No driver’s license number, no social security number or no birth date.

All you do is sign and date your ballot and return it in the envelope provided.

What if my ballot had been put in my neighbor’s mailbox instead of mine? Couldn’t he just fill them out and then on election day just vote again in person?

I have thought of many loopholes in this absentee voting scenario. What about you?</s>Almost a full day after polls closed, counties across the Bay Area still had hundreds of thousands of ballots to count — almost half of the number cast in a couple of cases.

And that’s to be expected as more and more California voters turn to mail-in ballots, which take longer to count, elections staff and experts say.

“This is the new normal,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “We vote for a month and count ballots for a month in California.”

What’s also lengthened the tallying time is a state law that went into effect in 2015, which allows vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later to be counted. Such ballots previously had to be received by Election Day.

As a result, many of the ballots sent close to Election Day don’t get into the hands of counters until later.

Alameda County had counted roughly 255,000 ballots Wednesday morning and still had some 250,000 more to count, said Tim Dupuis, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters.

Of the 255,442 that the county had already processed, about 134,000 were vote-by-mail and early voting ballots received before the polls closed. Dupuis estimated 90,000 more of those ballots still need to be counted.

“What we’re seeing is a shift in the way that our voters are voting,” Dupuis said, noting that about 70 percent of voters now submit mail ballots. “And that’s been a big shift. It’s been changing over the last few big election cycles.”

While the registrar had hoped the shift to mail-in ballots might encourage early voting, that hasn’t exactly happened.

“We’re seeing a large number of our voters dropping those vote-by-mail votes off on Election Day, which is going to lead to us having a larger number of votes to count after Election Day,” Dupuis said.

“We’ve really started to see it hit us in June,” he said. “We had over 100,000 votes dropped off on Election Day for the June primary, which was unusually high for us.”

Elections offices have 30 days to certify results. Dupuis said Alameda County is aiming to have that done before Thanksgiving.

In Contra Costa County, elections staff estimated Wednesday afternoon that 177,000 ballots still needed to be counted. Of those, about 151,000 are vote-by-mail ballots, 25,000 are provisional ballots and about 1,000 are conditional voter ballots.

Provisional ballots are cast by people who believe they are registered to vote even though their names are not on the official voter registration list or by people expected to vote by mail who instead show up at their polling place without a ballot, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Voters also are allowed to vote conditionally if they did not register to vote by the Oct. 22 deadline. These votes have to be verified by elections officials.

In Santa Clara County, more than 75 percent of voters use mail-in ballots. As of Wednesday afternoon, about 304,000 ballots were counted and staff estimated roughly 270,000 still needed to be.

While voting by mail makes for a slow counting process because signatures have to be checked, envelopes opened and ballots flattened, it makes things easier for voters, said Shannon Bushey, Registrar of Voters for Santa Clara County.

Santa Clara County implemented a 24-hour vote-by-mail processing system to help speed things up, she added.

In San Mateo County, as well as Madera, Napa, Sacramento and Nevada counties, the election offices participate in a new system made possible by the Voter’s Choice Act of 2016, which allows the counties to mail out ballots to every registered voter. There, people can vote at designated centers or simply drop off their ballots.

That left some of those counties with surges in mail-in ballots that needed to be counted, Alexander said.

But Alexander agreed with local elections officials that overall, the expansion of vote-by-mail ballots, conditional voter registration and some of the things that make ballot counting slower in recent elections is actually a good sign.

“I know people are impatient,” she said, “But we take our time, we count ballots, we make sure people aren’t disenfranchised. We also verify the vote and other states don’t do that. I’m grateful for that. I want us to get it right.”
State judges order election officials from Broward and Palm Beach Counties to release absentee ballot information as they continue to count the ballots.