Nice Job Florida!!! Take a bow!!!

[BlueintheSTL]

Your butterfly ballot cost us the White House in 2000, and now your terrible and flat out lazy ballot design cost us an important Senate seat and put Rick Scott of all people in the Senate.

Link to tweet

[Initech]

1. And also elected a racist piece of shit as their new governor.

[LBM20]

22. Young people and others who would be Dems need to FUCKING VOTE!

[Initech]

25. We also need to end gerrymandering and GOP voter restrictions!

What happened in Georgia and Florida is completely unacceptable, this has to stop.

[madville]

2. That county supervisor of elections is at fault

Each county lays out their own ballots. She is simply incompetent in her role but keeps getting reelected.

[MattP]

3. I saw a interview where she said the ballot was state approved of course it was!

[madville]

7. The county still designed the layout to meet state guidelines

Nothing was preventing them from putting the Senate race at the top of the ballot instead of under the instructions, moronic. 66 out of 67 counties didn't have this issue with their ballot layouts that were also "state approved". Now they have lost over 2,000 ballots they couldn't locate during the recount, she says they are in the building "somewhere", embarrassing.

[still_one]

26. It is time the voters kick her out

[brooklynite]

4. Florida isn't to blame; each County built a different ballot.

[LBM20]

23. In our state it is ONE ballot for the entire state.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. How do you vote for local offices and proposals?

My ballot had choices for local judges, city school board, state- and local-proposals.

[sl8]

5. Broward Co. ballot compared to Hillsborough Co. ballot.

From https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/broward-county-s-ballot-debacle-is-ballot-design-to-blame-

Broward County's ballot debacle: Is ballot design to blame?
Thousands of voter leave key race empty

Katie LaGrone
11:03 PM, Nov 9, 2018

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. — As the nation once again turns to South Florida for answers on how thousands of ballots were left in box tucked inside a classroom closet, new questions are being raised over whether flawed ballot design could be partly to blame for Florida's latest election spectacle.

It's part of the latest fallout surfacing in Broward County where thousands of voter ballots were discovered with choices for U.S. Senate left empty.

The empty ovals are now fueling concerns that 18 years after Florida's hanging chad fiasco forced significant ballot reform, Broward's ballots from the most recent election may have been plagued with bad design.

“How important is ballot design,” asked Investigative Reporter Katie LaGrone.

...

[Awsi Dooger]

33. Wow...what a difference in basic competence

Thanks for that side by side. Truly remarkable.

I have no idea why specialists are not involved in something like this. Merely because someone gets elected to the top position doesn't mean she knows a damn thing about designing a ballot.

[Hortensis]

6. The Republicans appointed a person to run elections in

Broward who can be counted on to mess things up and, despite excellent and ethically compelling reasons, have never removed her. For a district that is overwhelmingly Democratic, why would anyone be surprised that Florida's Republican leadership wants election irregularities and miscounts in Broward?

Not to be fooled by Ms. Snipes' Democratic label. Her appointment and negligence by 2 Republican governors who've declined to remove her for cause since is just another form of Republican election tampering. As for how she gets reelected, probably just the "D," but there could be more to that.

[MichMan]

8. The voters of Broward County keep re electing her in landslides with 80 % of the vote. They own this

" Gov. Jeb Bush removed Snipes’ predecessor, Miriam Oliphant, in 2003 after a disastrous 2002 election in which polls opened late and closed early after experienced senior staff had been fired by Oliphant and replaced by friends and acquaintances with little or no experience.

Bush named Snipes to replace Oliphant, and Snipes won election in 2004 and every four years subsequently.

The removal of Oliphant had been a political firestorm, with a Republican governor removing Broward’s only countywide black Democratic official. Bush replaced her with another black female Democrat, possibly defusing some of the tension.
The idea, then, that Snipes could be removed from office without having committed a serious crime or ethical violation is not without precedent. But what would be unprecedented is for Scott to do so while Snipes is determining the ballot count in a race in which the governor is running.

Of course, Snipes could always be removed the natural way — through an election. She’s next up for election in 2020. But Snipes has easily weathered previous attempts to remove her from office. In 2016, citing many past issues with elections during Snipes’ term in office, David Brown ran against her in a Democratic primary. He even garnered the endorsement of the Sun Sentinel. He was defeated 76-24.

She had no opponent in 2012, but in 2008, she had both Democratic and independent opponents, and beat them both with more than 80 percent of the vote.

In both 2008 and 2012, her opponents pointed to the elections office’s history of failings under Snipes. She won anyway, and easily. In 2004, she won a three-way Democratic primary with 65 percent of the vote. One of her opponents was Oliphant, in a last-ditch attempt to get her job back. The people decided the new supervisor was better than returning to the old one that had been removed for incompetence, and Snipes never looked back."

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-who-is-brenda-snipes-20181109-story,amp.html

[Hortensis]

12. Yes, but voters in Broward are no stupider than those in

McConnell's state who've been reelecting him for decades while he despises and betrays tehm. In McConnell's case, though, we know that he's been selling his influence for all that time, in return for which each election big (huge!) donors, instead of focusing on trying to make McConnell appealing, buried his opponents under avalanches of attacks. Finally, since becoming the extremely powerful majority leader, KY voters apparently do like him for that.

So that's McConnell. Why is Snipes getting reelected by large margins?

[madville]

9. I think she's just flat out incompetent

Do you really want Desantis to replace her though? He'll pick some well connected stooge.

No way Desantis fires a black woman from an elected position right after taking office, optics on that would be horrible. She's more valuable to them in office anyway because they can use her mismanagement as a fraud boogie man to scare their base to the polls.

[Kaleva]

14. then why do the citizens of Broward county keep relecting her by overwhelming margins?

At some point, citizen are gong to have to take responsibility.

[In It to Win It]

17. ...because most people don't know who they are truly voting for.

They don't pay attention to politics and who is running their elections.

[MichMan]

18. My guess is that it is no different than many down ticket races trhroughout the country

Voters seldom pay much attention to many of the down ticket races on the ballot until they are presented the ballot and have to pick someone. In those cases, it is likely based on name recognition and familiarity

In fact, I guess few voters could name the person in charge of their county elections if asked. This would be true of nearly every county in the US, not just Broward.

In a county that is predominantly under the control of one party, the incumbent is very difficult to defeat.

[VanillaC]

10. Disgusted....

I've been on DU for awhile mostly as a lurker but had to comment on this. I live in this county and I am so embarrassed. The whole world looking at the stupidity of Broward County. We gave Mayor Gillum hope thinking that he could win this and we screwed it up. The guy took back his concession speech just to have to concede again! If that wasn't bad enough, Rick Scott is now our Senator too! I am just disgusted. We haven't learned a thing. If we haven't learned from previous elections then Florida deserves what it gets. Nothing will change. There was no excuse for this. Nothing. I know people will say we should be happy for the seats that Democrats picked up or the fact that it was a close race but we needed this win to make a point that Florida has had enough!!!! Same thing goes for Georgia as well!!! I wish Gillum and Nelson could sue for the incompetence of Broward County but it looks bad for them as if asking for investigation into the recount didn't hurt them enough. Nothing like standing in line for hours to vote when it goes to waste every...single...time! Broward county needs to get it together! Sorry. Just fuming mad.

[MichMan]

32. As a Broward County resident, did you vote to re elect Dr. Snipes?

[LBM20]

11. Total and complete incompetence! They need to pull their heads out of the assholes!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

13. Here in Cook Cty, Ill, the voter inserts the ballot into the scanner while the judge stands nearby.

If there's an undervote, it's reported immediately and the voter can correct it if he wants to.
Is Broward different?

Also, would it be against the rules for a polling place worker to tell voters when they hand them a ballot to be careful not to overlook the Senate race because the ballot had a poor design?

[triron]

30. Same here in NM.

[Kaleva]

15. Overall, the 2018 miderm election went very well for us.

[LenaBaby61]

16. Florida's ....

Dems and that state in general, is going to be in a very bad place for a long while due to Scott being it's Senator, DeRACIST being it's governor and due to an all-thuglican State Supreme Court, who thanks to an increased age law (They'll be able to serve until 75 years of age) will have members serving a lot longer.

[BannonsLiver]

19. Florida, like Ohio is getting redder with each cycle

There was a lot of hooey about Puerto Rican voters making the difference for Dems which predictably didn’t matter much on Election Day, or at the very least wasn’t a difference maker.

I don’t consider Ohio a swing state anymore and Florida is trending that way fast. It’s been more than 2 decades since a Dem was governor and there’s little chance Dems can flip rubio’s seat in 2022. Scott is in the senate for life, or as long as he wants to be. Florida Dems have proven they can’t beat that guy at anything. Couldn’t be more grim in Fla. for the blue team.

[LBM20]

20. NELSON WON THE ELECTION. There was voter suppression and a fucked up ballot! Obama won FL twice.

T

[LBM20]

21. Obama won Ohio twice. Sherrod Brown won big. Dems need to VOTE and VOTE BIG.

[Sneederbunk]

27. Can hardly wait until 2020 Florida. Not!

I

[Phoenix61]

28. As soon as I get done digging out from

under all the crap Michael dumped on us I'll be sure to do that. You do realize that no one, and I mean no one, on DU voted for any of those asshats. Some empathy would go a long way.

[elocs]

29. Who thinks there were probably many more than 10,000 people in Florida

who would have voted for the Democratic candidates but who just didn't bother to vote?

[triron]

31. Large number of seniors retire in Florida.

As long as they foolishly vote republican Florida may be a purple state.

[Awsi Dooger]

34. Can't afford minor mistakes in a state with opponent so energized and organized

The poll models were wrong in Florida. That is part of the angst here and elsewhere. If we properly realized those were coin-flip races then it would still hurt but we wouldn't be claiming theft, or looking to blame.

Instead, the poll models continually assumed greater Democratic enthusiasm and turnout in Florida. That accounted for the Nelson and Gillum leads. But it was wrong. The GOP is incredibly well organized and energized here. As soon as the early votes started rolling in you could see the Republican turnout was greater across the state and specifically in the vital question of how elderly and how white the electorate would be. Young voters increased their participation but not nearly to the degree of other states, or toward necessary level in Florida.

Here is a related segment of Marc Caputo's latest blog post:

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/florida-playbook/2018/11/19/did-brenda-kill-bill-desantis-scott-win-again-fraud-probe-puts-fl-dems-on-d-the-lone-democrat-nikki-fried-348669

"WERE THE POLLS WRONG? — So polls told us that Nelson was marginally leading Scott, and that Gillum was marginally leading DeSantis by a little more. But both Democrats lost. Were the polls wrong? Yes and no. The key word above is “marginal.” In most polls, these leads were within a point or two of a margin of error and either sides’ candidates could win. But still, the toplines for most surveys were wrong to the degree they showed the Democrats more ahead than the Republicans. Why? Modeling. In the end, the story of this Florida midterm was like others: More Republicans turned out than Democrats. But many of the polls had more Democratic turnout than Republican turnout. (One caveat: Some of the random-digit dialing polls ask about party identification, which isn't the same thing as party registration.) Still, if the voter-list polls had better turnout models (which Associated Industries of Florida did), the results might’ve been less of a shocker to many.

WE WERE RIGHT (WE THINK) — One thing the polls collectively did seem to get right were the party breaks for the candidates (i.e., X, Y, and Z percent of Democrats, Republicans and independents were respectively voting for Gillum or DeSantis). As we noted Election Day morning when we took the public polling’s party breaks and averaged them, Gillum and Nelson were on the path to victory if 1) Democrats could hold Republicans below a 2 percentage-point turnout advantage overall and/or if 2) Democrats did not lose Election Day turnout to Republicans by 4 percentage points or more, as had happened in the past. It looks as if history repeated itself on Election Day. We don’t have final numbers, but it looked like an R+4 electorate on Election Day. And so Republicans won the big races."