Utterly Incompetent Brenda Snipes Is Finally Jobless -- No Longer Broward Elections Supervisor
Our long, regional nightmare is over. Brenda Snipes is out of a job.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (subscription required), Snipes — who the paper charitably noted oversaw “a 15-year tenure full of botched elections, legal disputes and blistering criticism” — handed in her resignation after manual recounts were completed on Sunday.
“It is true. She did send it,” said Burnadette Norris-Weeks, a lawyer who acts as counsel for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office.
Former spokeswoman Evelyn Perez-Verdia, meanwhile, said that she had heard from those in Snipes’ office that the letter had been sent “to Tallahassee” sometime on Sunday.
Broward’s controversial supervisor of elections, Brenda Snipes, has submitted her resignation.
Effective January. #FloridaRecount #FlaPolhttps://t.co/vFTeCHdVnk pic.twitter.com/DuS4JoC5nK— Anthony Man (@browardpolitics) November 19, 2018
As is typical with Snipes, there was some confusion regarding when the resignation would be taking effect. Norris-Weeks said Jan. 2 while Perez-Verdia said Jan. 5.
The question might seem academic, but one has to consider the amount of damage that Snipes can do in just a few days.
After all, just look at this election. Keep in mind that Snipes was supposed to be under special supervision by the state after a judge ruled earlier this year that she had improperly destroyed ballots in a primary election. Whatever that supervision may have entailed, it didn’t work.
First, Gov. Rick Scott — now Sen.-elect Rick Scott — was beyond unhappy that Snipes’ office couldn’t get the number of votes in the county straight on election night.
“On election night, Broward County said there were 634,000 votes cast. At 1 a.m. today, there were 695,700 ballots cast on Election Day,” Scott said on Nov. 8. “At 2:30 p.m. today, the number was up to 707,223 ballots cast on Election Day.”
“And we just learned, that the number has increased to 712,840 ballots cast on Election Day.”
Snipes would field multiple lawsuits over her handling of the debacle. A judge ruled that she had violated Florida records laws. It also came out that she mixed invalid provisional ballots with valid ones.
Then came the machine recount, which her office turned in two minutes late. Her office’s explanation for this, according to the Miami Herald, was that the recount had undercounted votes and that they turned in their machine recount late on purpose in order to wait for a manual recount. And then, when the manual recount came, Fox News reported that 47 manila envelopes of votes were almost wrongly counted before volunteers pointed out the error.
Snipes, meanwhile, blamed the criticism on bigotry. Asked by the U.K. Guardian if racism had played a part in the criticism — Snipes is African-American — she answered, “Probably. Probably.”
In short, she won’t be missed.
The official explanation the 75-year-old Snipes gave was that she wanted to spend more time with her family. She probably could have done this years ago. Keep in mind this is someone with a long track record of poor performance before this election.
Given that Broward is the second most-populous county in a state known for close elections, at what point did voters think Snipes was someone who should have been in the office?
There aren’t any elections between now and Jan. 2 and/or Jan. 5, mind you, but just watch. Brenda Snipes will still manage to do something mind-bogglingly awful between now and then.
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