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Watch: Brenda Snipes Bombs Interview, Gives Laughably Bad Prediction

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At some point, Brenda Snipes, supervisor of elections in Broward County, Florida, decided it was probably high time to embark on a media tour. Considering almost every individual involved in some sort of political disgrace is eventually expected to get himself or herself out of said disgrace one five-minute segment after another, this wasn’t a bad idea.

We all knew that Snipes hasn’t been terribly good at electioning, which is kind of problematic since that’s her job. I could recapitulate the multifarious sins of the woman who’s turned “Florida election debacle” from words you’d hear in an episode of “I Love the ’00s” into an ongoing nightmare. As I write this, Broward is apparently still trying to figure out what the hell went on a week and a half ago, which doesn’t augur well for anything.

Unfortunately for her — and we really should have predicted this — Snipes also isn’t good at interviewing, either.

It’s not like she chose William F. Buckley-era “Firing Line” to answer obvious questions about why nobody seems to be able to figure out how to solve the dumpster fire her county hath wrought or how she still has a job as commissioner of dumpsters.

No, she chose Chris Cuomo’s CNN show, which is basically like beer-league softball if you’re a Democrat. That things went wrong there probably should tell you a great deal.

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To be fair, Cuomo actually did something resembling his job, or what his job would entail were he an actual journalist and not an empty vessel for whatever outrage currently fills the hours on “Pod Save America.”

Florida has legislation, for instance, that requires county officials to make public certain information regarding elections — including how many votes are still outstanding. Most of America knows about these statutes because Brenda Snipes and her Broward retinue keep on breaking them, even despite the fact that a judge made it clear last week she was breaking the law, ruling in favor of Republican Gov. Rick Scott.

“But you have rules that you’re supposed to abide by and transparency that is very important,” Cuomo said during the segment Tuesday. “You refused to give the Scott campaign the information they wanted. It had to go to court. The judge said you had to turn it over, you didn’t turn it over by the deadline that was given. That is cast as a partisan spat, that you’re doing that because you’re a Democrat. How do you respond to that?”

I mean, that’s softball-ish, but it’s still actually a question and not just a Chris Hayes-ish, “On a scale of voter suppression to racist voter suppression, how would you rate what Rick Scott is doing?” It’s a question that it would have behooved her to answer directly — and, indeed, a question that was set up so that she could redeem herself by answering directly and score points against Scott.

You may not be surprised to learn she didn’t answer the question directly.



“Well, I was talking with a woman today as she came into our office and she made some statement about — a partisan statement — and she said, ‘I know that you’re a Republican.’ I said, ‘I have been a Democrat all my life,'” Snipes said. “In this position, I have been very focused on party, because I want to treat all of the voters in Broward County the same.”

Oh yeah, one woman. There’s a sample size. Of course, it was probably Andrea Mitchell.

The interview started with Cuomo asking Snipes if she would make Thursday’s deadline to finish the vote count.

“Absolutely,” she said. “My team and I are working very hard, very diligently to make sure that happens.” Pressed on the issue, Snipes said she was “100 percent” certain of her prediction.

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We know how that turned out. Broward blew the deadline, and the state rejected the results. “I have taken responsibility for every act in this office, good, bad or indifferent,” Snipes said afterward. “I always hold myself accountable.”

In her interview with Cuomo, she relayed a lot of anecdotes involving showing officials around warehouses full of ballots and how her office is “obviously” doing its job well because of voter turnout.

“Well, if it were that obvious, Rick Scott wouldn’t have had to go to court, with all due respect, right?” Cuomo responded.

“He had to go to court to get this tour, that you say you’re giving to everybody for no reason. You wouldn’t give it to him or his people. He had to go to court to get it. Fair criticism?”

Snipes wasn’t going to answer that one in a satisfactory manner either, and she insisted she wasn’t breaking the law — you know, the one a judge found she was breaking.

“No, it’s not. We don’t select who we give our information to,” Snipes said. “We give the information to those persons who have requested it, and I believe the public records request says ‘in a timely manner,’ and we attempt to do that. And we try to balance everything. We’re finishing up one of the biggest elections — as I mentioned earlier — for the midterm, so we’re trying to get everything complete. And as far as I know, we had a team working on that.”

She also called her team “highly trained, capable and competent,” despite the fact that every other county in Florida seems to have been more highly trained, capable and competent, because they seem to know how many people voted and they’re not dealing with controversies like rejected provisional ballots being put back into a pool with valid ones.

But she totally didn’t do that, she said. Except for the part where she said she did.

“They were — they were never counted. Those ballots had been separated. They had been isolated. They have not been counted to date,” Snipes said about the rejected provisional ballots.

Except she said, just seconds before, that “there were 25 ballots in question, not 21. And those 25 ballots had not been counted as of today. But now those ballots, as I understand it, came from valid Broward voters. …

“If the ballot doesn’t meet the standard, that’s one thing. But if the ballots have been determined to come from actual registered voters who met all the criteria of being a registered voter and operated as a registered voter, those votes should be counted.”

Do you think that Brenda Snipes should be fired?

That seems to indicate the ballots had been counted and put in with the pool. But whatever. View the interview for yourself, because it’s hilarious. Until you realize that an election could hinge on this very, very incompetent woman and the people around her.

Cuomo asked if she was considering resigning after this mess.

“As I told one of the reporters today, I’m thinking about many things. I have not made any decisions,” Snipes said. “Whatever I do, I will contemplate it very carefully and make what I think is the correct decision for me.”

Given her penchant for making correct decisions, I’d say that’s confirmation we’re stuck with her until the governor removes her. If this is how her redemption tour is going to go, however, expect that decision to come sooner than later.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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