Jack of Harts

I remember the year 2000 like it was yesterday. We’d just had our last Party Like It’s 1999, and then we rolled into a Presidential Election year. Then we had the election. Then Florida was called before the polls closed in Florida. Then the whole race was called before the polls closed in most of the United States.

And then we began to hear about vote counting irregularities in three Florida counties. Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Broward Counties. That set off a weeks-long recount of just over twenty thousand ballots that dominated the nation and came to a head when a large group of protestors arrived to protest the counting of ballots in secret, without witnesses. The words dimpled chad and hanging chad still resonate in our culture to this day.

In the end, the news media changed how they forecasted States, including strict requirements that they not forecast results before the polls closed in a State. Voting machines across the country changed in hopes of keeping the chads from confusing people.

And Florida completed overhauled the election laws of the State to keep something like this from ever happening again. One of those new laws is that all precincts must report the total number of votes cast, including provisional and absentee ballots, within 30 minutes of the polls closing. The main idea is so the State knows how many ballots are floating around out there and still waiting to be tabulated. If there is a difference of 60,000 votes between two candidates and there are 20,000 absentee or provisional ballots that have been received but not processed yet, the State can be pretty certain that they know who won.

Eighteen years later, we are in Florida again, with a projected win of 57,000 votes on Election Night for the outgoing governor to be the next Senator. And now we’re looking at Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the only two counties in Florida not abiding by the Florida elections laws to report how many ballots they have received. Where they are counting nearly ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND ballots not reported as even EXISTING on election night. Where they refused to allow witnesses to the counting of these unknown ballots. And where Broward is refusing to even follow a court order to report the total number of ballots they’ve received.

And for even more fun, in Broward County, the lady in charge of tabulating the votes has been found guilty this year of destroying ballots that were subject to a lawsuit accusing her of election tampering in 2016. They were the proof of how the election was handled, required by election law to be held for nearly two years. The defeated politician wanted to see them, which is allowable under Florida law. He filed a lawsuit three months later after receiving no access to the ballots. She signed a certification three months after the case was filed that no court cases involved those ballots and had them destroyed.

And for one more bit of fun, the Democrats brought in a big shot lawyer to help them win the Florida race. His name is Marc Elias, and he has a history of helping Democrats recount their way to victory after losing on Election Night. He represented Al Franken in 2008 in my home State of Minnesota. Al Franken lost on Election Night, but it was pretty tight. The recount lasted for months and featured such heartwarming stories as ballot boxes that had not been reported on Election Night being counted. We all know Al Franken ended up being selected as the Senator of Minnesota and voted for fun little bills like Obamacare.

You can say that I’ve seen this song and dance before.

Florida. Florida. Florida.

Here We Go Again.