New details of Broward’s 2018 recount fiasco revealed by county auditor
Broward County’s 2018 elections and recount — the mishandling of which briefly made the county the center of a debunked national election conspiracy theory — were so rife with problems that the county’s auditor was unable to verify the accuracy of reported vote totals despite a lengthy review.
In a newly published draft audit, County Auditor Bob Melton’s staff found that half the county’s polling places reported more votes than voters, and that mail ballots weren’t properly tracked, monitored or processed in a timely manner. Other, previously well-documented issues noted in the audit included the poor design of the ballot and the misplacement of more than 2,000 ballots during the recount.
“Based on the totality of these issues, we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported,” Melton wrote in the undated draft audit, submitted to the county in April.
Melton withdrew the audit — conducted by five staffers — after submitting it to county commissioners for consideration in early May. His executive assistant, Brenda Smith-Allen, wrote Tuesday in an email that the audit was pulled back for “further review for clarification,” and that the published version is “subject to revision.”
But the draft audit, first reported by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, sheds new light on the issues that plagued Florida’s bluest county. And it raises questions about whether Broward’s interim supervisor will be ready to handle an even larger crush of ballots in November.
Peter Antonacci, an attorney appointed by former Florida Gov. Rick Scott to run Broward’s elections through November, declined Tuesday to comment on the audit. But in written responses to Melton’s office last month, he noted that he has already overseen several, smaller elections since taking control of the office. And while acknowledging the “chaos” of the midterm elections, he said none of the problems raised by Melton were so severe that they would have overturned the results of any race.
“The identified discrepancies do not change the outcome of any race and solving the data accumulation and transmission challenge with current technology is the primary issue,” Antonacci wrote in response to findings that his office was unable to explain why more than 1,100 Election Day votes were transmitted in the 48 hours after Election Day.
Attempts to reach Brenda Snipes, the elections supervisor who retired following her suspension by Scott, were unsuccessful.
Before her removal from office, Snipes became a controversial figure for the GOP after Election Day in 2018 as three statewide races required automatic recounts due to razor-thin margins.
President Donald Trump accused her of voter fraud. Scott made allegations of improper activity during a press conference in front of the governor’s mansion. Republicans gathered in protest outside her Lauderhill headquarters, alleging that thousands of blank ballots were being shipped in to aid losing Democratic candidates.
Those accusations were unfounded: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement last month closed three investigations into the midterm elections — two of them involving allegations of voter fraud in Broward County — without seeking charges.
Audit’s preliminary findings
But the preliminary findings of the audit — the most recent report to break down the issues that plagued Broward County’s midterm elections — show that there were lax controls over ballots and unexplained discrepancies. And it helps explain why Snipes’ office had such trouble tabulating ballots in the days after the polls closed.
Among the findings:
▪ Snipes’ office fell behind in counting mail ballots, leaving nearly 50,000 unopened by the time voting began on Election Day. Close to 20,000 more mail ballots were received on Election Day, slowing down Snipes’ office and leading it to report tens of thousands of votes during the proceeding 48 hours. Melton posited that “inadequate staffing” contributed to the problem.
▪ Staff left six precincts on election night without realizing that voting results hadn’t been properly transmitted from vote tabulation machines. Even after they addressed the problem, more than 6,500 votes were transmitted in the hours that followed, including 1,100 after election night that staff could not explain.
▪ More than half — 293 — of Broward’s 577 Election Day precincts reported more ballots than voters. The discrepancies were in the hundreds, reflecting only a small percentage of Broward County’s 1.2 million voters.
▪ Snipes’ office reported ordering nearly 47,000 more ballots than it reported sending to Election Day precincts, and had no process to confirm that nearly 650,000 unused Election Day ballots were received safely after polls closed. The audit contained no findings that blank ballots were fraudulently filled out, and Antonacci noted in his response that the Florida Division of Elections requires that all unused election materials be accounted for.
▪ Some 2,335 ballots were misplaced while separating the first page of the multi-page ballots in preparation for the recount.
The 55-page audit, which has yet to be finalized, also found hundreds of thousands of dollars in waste and lax procurement protocols. Findings scrutinizing the state’s process for verifying voters’ citizenship were questioned by at least one county commissioner, Beam Furr, who submitted reports in early May pushing back on some of the auditor’s suggestions.
Cynthia Busch, chairperson of Broward’s Democratic Party, also said she was frustrated with some of Melton’s findings regarding third-party voter registration groups.
“It was implied there aren’t sufficient safety precautions to guarantee these forms are collected properly,” said Busch. “All of our forms are tracked with unique identifiers. We know every voter registered by every one of our volunteers, as is required by statute.”
Melton also encouraged Antonacci to engage in a voter education campaign. Antonacci agreed that such a campaign should be prioritized next year. However, Antonacci is not running for election in November, and it will be up to his successor to guarantee that happens.
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 4:39 PM.
