A heavily Republican Florida county allowed some residents to vote by email, apparently illegally

Authored by theweek.com and submitted by barak181
image for A heavily Republican Florida county allowed some residents to vote by email, apparently illegally

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) jumped into the GOP pile-on of Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes on Monday, tweeting that "there is no question ... Snipes failed to comply with Florida law on multiple counts." Snipes, first appointed by Bush, has made some errors, but state law enforcement and election officials have found no evidence of illegal behavior by Snipes, and on Monday a judge ruled against Gov. Rick Scott's (R) motion to impound the voting equipment in heavily Democratic Broward County.

In heavily Republican Bay County, however, election supervisor Mark Andersen acknowledged Monday that he had allowed some voters to cast their ballots over email, which is not allowed under state law.

Bay County was hit hard by Hurricane Michael on Oct. 10, and Scott issued an executive order on Oct. 18 extending early voting and expanding more voting locations in the eight affected counties. His order, The Associated Press reports, explicitly prohibited votes being returned by email or fax. Andersen defended his decision to let 150 people scan their ballots and email them in, telling NBC affiliate WJHG/WECP, "If you want to turn around and take away these votes away from voters because it's not the normal prescribed issue, I would just say you ought to be ashamed of yourself because what we did is take care of voters."

sheepsleepdeep on November 13rd, 2018 at 20:27 UTC »

At first I wanted to sympathize with the elections supervisor... I could understand wanting to help people affected by the storm. But then I read this...

Bay County was hit hard by Hurricane Michael on Oct. 10, and [Gov. Rick Scott] issued an executive order on Oct. 18 extending early voting and expanding more voting locations in the eight affected counties. His order, The Associated Press reports, explicitly prohibited votes being returned by email or fax. 

And his response to "you clearly violated the law and ignored a direct order from the governor" is "...well if you want to take these peoples votes away, I think that's wrong"

strangeelement on November 13rd, 2018 at 20:14 UTC »

From a technical perspective, email is not even close to be safe for this purpose.

Not even close.

corginamedzelda on November 13rd, 2018 at 19:58 UTC »

hey, Trump says he will prosecute all election fraud lets see it.