Do-Overs

When you consider the post-election debacle in Florida's Broward and Palm Beach Counties, you just can't escape the irony. Over the past two years, we've seen the Democrats hyperventilate over wholly unsubstantiated claimed that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to swing an election. They're on firmer ground with their claim that Russian trolls and bots "influenced" the election and have voiced their concern in no uncertain terms. But Russian trolls and bots produce only disinformation that might influence less discerning voters, not actual voter fraud. Keep that in mind as you read further.

Nonetheless, the Dems are the first to say, "Election interference is a threat to our democracy." They're right.

Yet those same Dems are surprisingly sanguine when two blue counties in Florida now find lots and lots of uncounted votes after two close elections won by GOP candidates. Convenient, isn't it?

But according to the Dems, it's just a coincidence that Broward and Palm Beach counties have now found uncounted and unreported votes days after the election while an odd twist of fate has it that both counties are strongly Democratic. It's merely a meaningless footnote that Democrat election officials in Broward county have a long and sordid history of near-fraudulent behavior during and after elections and have been sanctioned by the courts. Yeah, it's all just an accident of fate, providence, serendipity.

Let's get real! It's also a blatant attempt to steal an election that the Democrats in both counties and throughout Florida thought they had in the bag. They can't blame the Russkies for any of this, so the next best thing is to miraculously find uncounted votes long after the legally mandated deadline for reporting those votes had expired. Democrat lawyers will now descend on Broward and Palm Beach counties, yelling "voter suppression," "racism" and any other epithet that might gain them sympathy. It's all a scam, but it just might work. And now, this manufactured chaos has lead the Florida Election Commission to demand a recount in both races—still more opportunity for foul play.

Mollie Hemmingway comments on this banana republic behavior and on the media's seeming lack of interest:

To make sure that votes aren’t being invented or destroyed to effect an outcome, one of the first priorities of any election supervisor is to announce how many ballots are in possession and how many remain to be counted. To fail to do this, as the Broward County and Palm Beach County Supervisors had, is to open themselves up to the accusation of massive vote fraud.

Citizens can not have confidence that ballots are not being destroyed, or created, when supervisors fail to immediately announce how many ballots are on hand.

Florida law also requires that vote-by-mail and absentee ballots are accounted for within 30 minutes of polls closing. While the other 65 counties [the majority are Red] in Florida had no problem following this state law, the supervisors of Broward County and Palm Beach County refused to follow that law.

Florida law also requires that the Department of State be given reports every 45 minutes until results are completely filed. Palm Beach County has refused to do this.

Despite these stunning violations of law, and [Senator Marco] Rubio’s cry to stop the madness in these counties that have a history of election problems, media seemed largely uninterested in what was happening in Florida.

Have you ever noticed that despite the statistical odds, these recounts always seem to find more Democrat votes—never the other way around. Gosh, you'd think that once in a while the GOP vote count would grow during a recount. Nah.

And by the way, for those progressives who still think that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, a definitive study by none other than the NYT (certainly no friend of the GOP) indicated that the Florida vote count that gave Bush the presidency was accurate and untainted, so spare me the ill-informed what-about comparisons that are bound to occur.

The good news is that the Dem attempt to subvert the vote is so blatant that the GOP candidates won't roll over (as many have done in the past). It's time to put a stop to this stuff ... and soon.

The Dems are relentless in their quest for power, and that's okay, until it crosses the line into unethical, dishonest, and possibly criminal activity. It appears that they already crossed that line. As an aside, it looks like the Dems are very concerned about aggressive push back against the press when Donald Trump does it verbally, but when a Palm Beach election supervisor who threatens to have reporters jailed trying to get information about this election, crickets.

Let's assume for a moment that Democrat officials in Broward and Palm Beach County county are simply incompetent and forgot to process votes when they were mandated to process them. There are laws and regulations that govern the validity of those votes, and those laws and rule MUST be followed. That's not "voter suppression," that's the rule of law. If there is fraud, the guilty should go to jail. And for the voters whose ballots were uncounted due to the incompetence of election officials? They might want to vote for competent governance that wouldn't make such egregious mistakes (or participate in criminal conduct). But that's next time ... for this election, follow the law and the existing regulations and rules—there should be no do-overs.

UPDATE:
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Roger Simon overstates things—but only slightly—when he writes:

We're Honduras now.

No Banana Republic -- past or present -- could really outdo Florida when it comes to electoral corruption. After all, the population of the Sunshine State is roughly the same as the populations of Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua combined. It's also larger than the population of Guatemala by itself.

Too bad Garcia Márquez is dead and can't write another novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude to describe life in Florida as he did of Colombia when it was hugely corrupt. He could win a second Nobel Prize. (Yes, I know the author was a Castro crony, but nobody's perfect.)

So who's responsible for this nauseating state of affairs? The Democrats, no surprise, behave as if Boss Tweed were reincarnated in Miami Beach, bringing down their best Fusion GPS lawyer from the Perkins Coie mafia of Trump dossier fame to oversee the recount. As long as you're on the "correct" side of things, by any means necessary, right?

I can only hope that the general electorate will view this Democrat stunt in much the same way they viewed the Kavanaugh cesspool—unethical, dishonest, and repugnant. But then again, the Dems live by the BAMN credo—by any means necessary. And if that taints the electoral process and causes many to lose faith in democratic elections? That's a small price to pay for power, right?

Sarah Hoyt puts an exclamation point on all of this when she writes: "Memo to the dems: You’re playing with fire in a powder arsenal. None of us will enjoy the explosion. And you might find, to your shock, you’ve destroyed the only country on Earth who would tolerate your shenanigans."