Technician Reportedly Witnessed Florida Officials' Surreal Incompetence with Voting Machines
At some point, this has to be a sick practical joke, right?
There’s no possible way that the state of Florida can be this bad at voting, is there? For crying out loud, voting is “only” one of the most important practices this country was founded on.
And yet, just when you think Florida couldn’t get any worse when it comes to tallying votes, the Sunshine State finds ways to put a cloud over its reputation.
It’s no secret that there is extreme incompetence at the top, with Broward County election official Brenda Snipes being a chief example. Whether she’s giving laughably bad interviews or exhibiting borderline malicious incompetence, Snipes represents the very worst of what’s wrong with voting in Florida.
But she’s far from the only problem — and Broward County isn’t the only place in Florida that’s embarrassing itself on the national state.
One county to the north of Broward, Palm Beach County’s election supervisor is Susan Bucher, a women who gives Snipes a run for her money in the incompetence sweepstakes.
And Palm Beach is providing the latest troubling example of what happens when incompetence trickles down to election workers, according to a New York Times report from Friday.
The Times reports that Palm Beach County found “dozens of precincts missing a significant number” of votes during the machine recount.
Bucher, apparently immune to any potential wrongdoing, pointed the blame at an “overheated and outdated ballot-scanning machine.”
“its technicians had witnessed Palm Beach County elections workers, apparently worried that one of the machines was running too fast, jam a paper clip into the scanner’s ‘enter’ button in an effort to slow it down. That, in turn, caused a short circuit”https://t.co/yTgfceVkFp
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) November 17, 2018
Dominion Voting, the manufacturer of that machine, fired back, pointing the finger of blame at Bucher’s oversights.
Having sent technicians over to help address the various technical issues the ballot machines were facing, those technicians reportedly saw some jaw-dropping incompetence from Bucher’s staff.
The technicians reportedly “witnessed Palm Beach County elections workers, apparently worried that one of the machines was running too fast, jam a paper clip into the scanner’s ‘enter’ button in an effort to slow it down.”
That is the kind of solution a 5-year-old child comes up with when his PlayStation controller isn’t working properly. It should not be the go-to response for election workers.
Worse yet, technicians were literally there, seeing as how they witnessed it. So instead of bothering to ask for help from people who are eminently qualified, these election workers chose to jam a paper clip into a voting machine. Utterly unbelievable.
“That, in turn, caused a short circuit that cut off the power” to the voting machine, according to what the company spokeswoman told the Times.
Kay Stimson, Dominion Voting’s vice president for government affiars, summed up the situation in dry terms, according to the Miami Herald:
“Based on what our technicians witnessed on site and reported to the company thus far, there is a strong indication that nonstandard operation of the equipment and human error did more to contribute to the issues than the equipment itself.”
(It’s pretty clear that jamming a paper clip into the “enter” button qualifies as “nonstandard operation of the equipment.” The phrase “human error” is putting it charitably.)
While there is a tinge of humor to the general idiocy of these election workers, it’s a gravely serious matter. The issues from breaking the machine were so serious “that the county was unable to complete its machine recount on time and its results were not included in the state vote totals.”
Those are honest American voters whose voice is being squelched by sheer incompetence. That is not okay, in any way, shape or form.
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