Time to Disenfranchise Broward and Palm Beach Counties townhall.com/columnists/tom…
across America—and around the globe—we are all facing the prospect of a rerun we don’t want to experience: yet another stupid, protracted, over-lawyered “election recount” drama in the state of Florida.
What this latest totally unnecessary “emergency” requires is out of the box—to wit, radical—thinking. It is time to throw out ALL ballots cast November 6th in Palm Beach County and Broward County. Every one.
Whether cast for Republicans, Dems, Libertarians or write-ins. Then use the accurately counted, professionally handled ballots from Florida’s remaining 65 counties to determine who won last week’s election for the next U.S. Senator, Governor and State Agriculture Commissioner.
This, of course, would elicit yowls from intelligent people (as well as from MSNBC hosts) that ALL voters in those two populous counties have thus been “disenfranchised” and they ALL should file lawsuits.
Which is true. And they should.
Which is true. And they should.
The lawsuits should name as defendants the specific parties responsible for ballot irregularities ranging from idiotic butterfly ballots to the “hanging chads” and—a few days ago—the Provisional Ballots box a teacher suddenly “found” at Sunshine Elementary School in Miramar.
The lawsuits should be filed against elections officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Once these officials are held personally responsible for the repeated bungling of completed ballots which county residents had every right to believe would be accurately counted, two things would likely happen:
1) buffoons in those offices would be replaced & elections in Broward County and Palm Beach County would not cause FL’s statewide winners to be held up by weeks of partisan wrangling because a ballot was misplaced, fell off a truck or burned up when a spark flew out of a toaster.
That’s what we don’t even accept from elections in remote villages of Third World countries, much less in two of the most populous counties in Florida.
When Dem @AndrewGillum—who conceded Tuesday to Ron DeSantis after “final” results were announced—has to look like a fool by “unconceding” once it turns out all the votes have STILL not been counted a week later, it’s time to accept this as business as usual.
Disenfranchising this year’s ballots in Broward and Palm Beach counties will resolve the 2018 statewide races quickly, and ensure that future balloting will be overseen by competent, qualified elections supervisors rather than the current rogue’s gallery of political hacks.
