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Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes

TU Curmudgeon

B.A. (Sarc), LLb. (Lex Sarcasus), PhD (Sarc.)
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From FOX News

Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – The top election official in Florida's heavily Democratic Broward County said late Thursday that the county had uploaded the results of its recount two minutes after the state’s 3 p.m. deadline – making its machine recount tally void. Instead, the county's results from last Tuesday’s election will stand until manual recount totals in the state's closely contested Senate race come in Sunday at noon.

GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott's campaign charged that embattled Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes intentionally submitted late results so that they would be invalidated. In the recount, Scott's Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, lost more votes than Scott -- meaning Scott would have seen a net gain of 779 votes if Snipes hadn't been late.

The news of the bungled ballot count comes after Snipes boasted about never missing a deadline.

“We are excited to be at this point,” she said Thursday afternoon.

COMMENT:-

Quite frankly I'm stunned that such a stupid event could ever take place in a country that prides itself on free, fair, open, and honest elections.

Admittedly I live in a country that some people on DP refer to as "Communist Canada", but here the rules are:


  1. if you are in line to vote when the closing hour for voting arrives, they stop the clock and you get to vote (but no late comers are allowed to join the line);
    • What happens in your jurisdiction?;
  2. while you do have to prove your identity to vote, the ways of doing so are HERE;
    • What are the equivalent acceptable IDs in your jurisdiction?
  3. In order to be a Returning Officer you have to meet certain qualifications and you can find those HERE;
    • What are the qualifications in your jurisdiction?
  4. the counting of votes is finished when the votes are actually counted.
    • When does the counting of votes end in your jurisdiction?

 
The fact remains that with a difference of thousands of (12K?) votes it is unlikely that any recount will change the outcome.
 
A manual recount means the machine recount is irrelevant anyway since a manual recount was already known to be required due to less than a 0.25% difference between the 2 candidates.

It is amazing how many elections were decided around the country by less than 1%.
 
The fact remains that with a difference of thousands of (12K?) votes it is unlikely that any recount will change the outcome.

I'm still wondering how (about) 35,000 people "forgot" to vote for Senator/Governor (I forget which it was) in ONLY one county.
 
A manual recount means the machine recount is irrelevant anyway since a manual recount was already known to be required due to less than a 0.25% difference between the 2 candidates.

True, and if the machine recount had shown that one candidate had 0.251% more votes than another the screw up would have been - what?

It is amazing how many elections were decided around the country by less than 1%.

Given that "Republican identification x Republican turnout" and "Democrat identification x Democrat turnout" tend to be pretty close to each other, it isn't all that surprising. Not only that, it isn't all that surprising that BOTH "Republican identification x Republican turnout" AND "Democrat identification x Democrat turnout" tend towards being (almost) constants.
 
I'm still wondering how (about) 35,000 people "forgot" to vote for Senator/Governor (I forget which it was) in ONLY one county.

Wondering what the heck is going in American elections can be a full-time avocation. For example, here is also what I wonder about Michigan in 2016:

Michigan recount finds voting WAS flawed – but mainly in Clinton-friendly Detroit where one-third of voting machines recorded too many ballots
Only 236 of Detroit's 662 voting precincts had ballot totals and registration records that matched on Election Day
Fully 248 of them had too many votes counted
Democrat Hillary Clinton won the city with a whopping 95 per cent of the vote but lost the state of Michigan by 0.2 per cent
Green Party nominee Jill Stein paid for a recount that uncovered the discrepancies but a judge halted it a week ago

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...oit-one-voting-machines-recorded-ballots.html

How does this stuff happen? Is this correlated to counties that are dominated by African-American's ? (e.g. Broward).

Who knows, we just keep wondering.
 
From FOX News

Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – The top election official in Florida's heavily Democratic Broward County said late Thursday that the county had uploaded the results of its recount two minutes after the state’s 3 p.m. deadline – making its machine recount tally void. Instead, the county's results from last Tuesday’s election will stand until manual recount totals in the state's closely contested Senate race come in Sunday at noon.

GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott's campaign charged that embattled Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes intentionally submitted late results so that they would be invalidated. In the recount, Scott's Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, lost more votes than Scott -- meaning Scott would have seen a net gain of 779 votes if Snipes hadn't been late.

The news of the bungled ballot count comes after Snipes boasted about never missing a deadline.

“We are excited to be at this point,” she said Thursday afternoon.

COMMENT:-

Quite frankly I'm stunned that such a stupid event could ever take place in a country that prides itself on free, fair, open, and honest elections.

Admittedly I live in a country that some people on DP refer to as "Communist Canada", but here the rules are:


  1. if you are in line to vote when the closing hour for voting arrives, they stop the clock and you get to vote (but no late comers are allowed to join the line);
    • What happens in your jurisdiction?;
  2. while you do have to prove your identity to vote, the ways of doing so are HERE;
    • What are the equivalent acceptable IDs in your jurisdiction?
  3. In order to be a Returning Officer you have to meet certain qualifications and you can find those HERE;
    • What are the qualifications in your jurisdiction?
  4. the counting of votes is finished when the votes are actually counted.
    • When does the counting of votes end in your jurisdiction?


By the way, what is a returning officer.
 
I'm still wondering how (about) 35,000 people "forgot" to vote for Senator/Governor (I forget which it was) in ONLY one county.

My understanding was that the ballot had that office at the end of the ballot near the instructions instead of with the other candidates/issues.
 
Wondering what the heck is going in American elections can be a full-time avocation. For example, here is also what I wonder about Michigan in 2016:



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...oit-one-voting-machines-recorded-ballots.html

How does this stuff happen? Is this correlated to counties that are dominated by African-American's ? (e.g. Broward).

Who knows, we just keep wondering.

Why not check out the links in my post to see how elections are conducted in your neighbour.

You might also be interested in "Chapter 4 The House of Commons and Its Members - Electoral Boundaries".

You might also find "Chapter 7 The Speaker and Other Presiding Officers of the House" interesting (albeit somewhat lengthy) in that it highlights some fairly significant differences between the Canadian and American systems. Whether you prefer one or the other is a matter of personal taste (and also what form of government you want to have [and whether you believe that "It ain't from around here so it just has to be bad."]).
 
From FOX News

Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes


In answer to you question, in California:

1. At a minimum if you are in-line to vote before closing time, you will still get to vote. It is quite common for parties and candidates to appeal to judges under some legal pretext, sometimes judges will issue orders to ignore the law and keep polling places open for much longer. So polling places must be prepared to hand out lots of provisional ballots for after hours voting, and wait to see how a contested case will pan out.
[
2) In general you do not have to prove your identity. You will be asked to confirm your address and then sign. If this your first time voting, while some kind of photo ID from somewhere is requested (which usually won't indicate citizenship status) even a payroll stub is sufficient.

3) The counting of and reporting of final vote tallies must end no later than 30 days after the election. California is notorious for is glacial counting of vote-by-mail ballots, provisional ballots, etc. For example, Clinton's numbers were still rising weeks after the election was over as millions were uncounted in the first week.

One of the more interesting contrasts is that the American left is quite often makes the assumption that whatever indifference they have towards legal voting is not shared in the remainder of the progressive world, and it is sometimes a shock to those in other lands wherein obvious and common-sense protocols are accepted.
 
By the way, what is a returning officer.

Each Electoral District has a "Returning Officer" who is responsible for the organization and conduct of voting. Part of their mandate is to arrange for a sufficient number of polling places so that as many people who want to vote can do so conveniently (almost all Canadian schools, community halls, recreation centres, and a lot of church halls end up being polling places [many polling places have several different registration stations so that people from all of the surrounding areas can vote at the most convenient location]) and another part of their mandate is to ensure that no political party interferes with the actual conduct of the voting or vote counting.

Over top of the "Returning Officer" is the "Chief Returning Officer" who is responsible (administratively) for the election throughout the entire province (and that includes training "Returning Officers", "Deputy Returning Officers", and "Poll clerks".

Subordinate to the "Returning Officer" are the "Deputy Returning Officers" who are responsible for the overall administration of a single polling location and whose duties include ensuring that there is no "party manipulation" of the election.

Subordinate to the Deputy Returning Officers" are the "Poll Clerks" who actually check voter ID, direct voters to the appropriate registration station, recheck voter ID, issue ballots, direct voters to the voting booths, and ensure that the ballots are actually placed in the ballot boxes.

After the close of voting, the "Poll Clerks" (under the supervision of the "Deputy Returning Officer") conduct the actual count of the ballots - at this point "Official Observers" from the political parties come into play but their power is limited strictly to drawing a perceived error to the attention of the "Deputy Returning Officer" for adjudication. Complaints about an adjudication by a "DRO" get referred to the "RO" and from there to the "CRO". Disputes over the adjudication of the CRO go to court.

You might note (if you check the link in my Point 3), that political parties have exactly ZERO say in the appointments of "Chief Returning Officers", "Returning Officers", "Deputy Returning Officers" and/or "Poll Clerks".

You might also note (if you check my Point 2), that the definition of what constitutes "acceptable identification" is probably "slightly" more wide-ranging than it is in your jurisdiction (AND that several of those forms of identification can be obtained as ZERO cost to the voter).

I'm not saying that the Canadian system for the conduct of elections is BETTER than the American one, only that it appears to provide less room for political parties to manipulate the results (especially since the political parties have ZERO ability to actually change electoral district boundaries and since the people who do do the "redistricting" have to work from some fairly concrete guidelines (which actually make sense to the average person).

Why don't I say it is "better"?

Because "better" is a matter of opinion and if your preferred system of conducting "free, fair, open, and honest elections" is to allow the political parties to manipulate the outcomes, then a system that does that is "better" than one that doesn't.

PS - You might find "Polling Locations Accessibility Checklist" interesting. How many of those criteria did your polling place meet?
 
In answer to you question, in California:

1. At a minimum if you are in-line to vote before closing time, you will still get to vote. It is quite common for parties and candidates to appeal to judges under some legal pretext, sometimes judges will issue orders to ignore the law and keep polling places open for much longer. So polling places must be prepared to hand out lots of provisional ballots for after hours voting, and wait to see how a contested case will pan out.

Simpler here. Be in line BEFORE the scheduled close of polls, you get to vote. Don't and you don't.

I can envision the possibility of some catastrophic situation which MIGHT require that a poll be extended, but I can't recall it ever having to be done (and if it was needed, then I would envision a joint submission by all the political parties AND the DRO).

2) In general you do not have to prove your identity. You will be asked to confirm your address and then sign. If this your first time voting, while some kind of photo ID from somewhere is requested (which usually won't indicate citizenship status) even a payroll stub is sufficient.

Payroll stub is on the list here too. Voters have been required to present SOME identification in Canadian elections for longer than I care to remember and it has never been a significant problem because of a fairly wide-ranging definition of "acceptable ID" (many of which the voter routinely possesses and a lot of which the voter can obtain without either application or cost).

3) The counting of and reporting of final vote tallies must end no later than 30 days after the election. California is notorious for is glacial counting of vote-by-mail ballots, provisional ballots, etc. For example, Clinton's numbers were still rising weeks after the election was over as millions were uncounted in the first week.

Counting and reporting is normally finished within hours of the close of polls.

"Absentee and/or advance" ballots are not counted unless there are enough of them to actually affect the final outcome (i.e. if Candidate X is ahead of Candidate Y by 10,000 votes and there are a total of 9,000 "absentee and/ or advance" ballots cast, then it really doesn't matter even if 100% of those ballots were for Candidate Y, so why bother)

One of the more interesting contrasts is that the American left is quite often makes the assumption that whatever indifference they have towards legal voting is not shared in the remainder of the progressive world, and it is sometimes a shock to those in other lands wherein obvious and common-sense protocols are accepted.

When you speak of "the American left" I presume that you mean "The LESS Reactionary Wing of the American Oligarchic Capitalist Party" and not of any significant portion of the American electorate that would be seen as even "Left Center" on the world stage.

When you speak of "illegal voting" I presume you are talking about the roughly 0.0000001% of the vote that that actually comprises (and that's if you lump in those who voted for "the American left" with those who voted for "the American right").

PS - Does someone whose ID differs by a comma from the information on the voters' list and who votes count as an "illegal vote"? It appears to some on DP that they do.
 
All of those volunteers did all of that work for nothing, because the guy in charge could not do his job.

This is the sort of thing that massively wrecks faith in government.

We absolutely must decide to Be Better!
 
From FOX News

Broward misses machine recount deadline -- by 2 minutes

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. – The top election official in Florida's heavily Democratic Broward County said late Thursday that the county had uploaded the results of its recount two minutes after the state’s 3 p.m. deadline – making its machine recount tally void. Instead, the county's results from last Tuesday’s election will stand until manual recount totals in the state's closely contested Senate race come in Sunday at noon.

GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott's campaign charged that embattled Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes intentionally submitted late results so that they would be invalidated. In the recount, Scott's Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, lost more votes than Scott -- meaning Scott would have seen a net gain of 779 votes if Snipes hadn't been late.

The news of the bungled ballot count comes after Snipes boasted about never missing a deadline.

“We are excited to be at this point,” she said Thursday afternoon.

COMMENT:-

Quite frankly I'm stunned that such a stupid event could ever take place in a country that prides itself on free, fair, open, and honest elections.

Admittedly I live in a country that some people on DP refer to as "Communist Canada", but here the rules are:


  1. if you are in line to vote when the closing hour for voting arrives, they stop the clock and you get to vote (but no late comers are allowed to join the line);
    • What happens in your jurisdiction?;
  2. while you do have to prove your identity to vote, the ways of doing so are HERE;
    • What are the equivalent acceptable IDs in your jurisdiction?
  3. In order to be a Returning Officer you have to meet certain qualifications and you can find those HERE;
    • What are the qualifications in your jurisdiction?
  4. the counting of votes is finished when the votes are actually counted.
    • When does the counting of votes end in your jurisdiction?


This woman is just an embarrassment....She has one job, to count the votes, and she can't even do that without incompetence....
 
This woman is just an embarrassment....She has one job, to count the votes, and she can't even do that without incompetence....

I don't think it was her fault, there is only so much you can do when they keep discovering new votes...

PgbbFlp.jpg
:lol:
 
I don't think it was her fault, there is only so much you can do when they keep discovering new votes...

PgbbFlp.jpg
:lol:

No doubt...How much of that will we put up with?
 
Its possible that yodasnipes has great galactic issues with the force to address and is too busy to bother with broward.

yodasnipes.jpg
 
I don't think it was her fault, there is only so much you can do when they keep discovering new votes...

PgbbFlp.jpg
:lol:

Neat photoshop job.

Too bad there's no connection to reality.
 
Simpler here. Be in line BEFORE the scheduled close of polls, you get to vote. Don't and you don't.

I can envision the possibility of some catastrophic situation which MIGHT require that a poll be extended, but I can't recall it ever having to be done (and if it was needed, then I would envision a joint submission by all the political parties AND the DRO).
It's a culture thing - depending on where you live some cultures are more rule respectful and bounded than are others. In general, however, Americans figure that the law is mainly advisory and that "the judges" are the ones to go to "get us justice". Hence the courts are often put in the position of managing what should be an administrative process. (There is a reason why the US is reputed to have the highest number of lawyers per person).

"Payroll stub is on the list here too. Voters have been required to present SOME identification in Canadian elections for longer than I care to remember and it has never been a significant problem because of a fairly wide-ranging definition of "acceptable ID" (many of which the voter routinely possesses and a lot of which the voter can obtain without either application or cost).
Yes, the main difference is that in California you only need to show ONE item (eg payroll stub, utility bill, etc.) without a photo, one-time. After that, for the remainder of you life all they need is your word that you are who you say you are.

Counting and reporting is normally finished within hours of the close of polls.
That kind of simplicity and speed died out in America decades ago. However, it strikes me as quite logical to not count the absentee/mail-in ballots if they can't affect the final outcome.

(when you) speak of "the American left" I presume that you mean "The LESS Reactionary Wing of the American Oligarchic Capitalist Party" and not of any significant portion of the American electorate that would be seen as even "Left Center" on the world stage.
No, I am not speaking a "wing", but I am speaking of that minority who self-identify as being a leftist or progressive and typically vocalize support for various types of socialism. For example, many of the folk I know or run-into in Berkeley.

When you speak of "illegal voting" I presume you are talking about the roughly 0.0000001% of the vote that that actually comprises (and that's if you lump in those who voted for "the American left" with those who voted for "the American right").
I couldn't be speaking of that, because it would be proof of divine intervention - a failure rate for any human directed process of just one in ten million - be it the US mail system, social security, or county voting - is ludicrous (or an American progressives delusion). Illegal voting are those ballots cast that are illegal; those cast by illegal aliens, non-citizen residents, felons, double voting, etc. the majority by mistake, a minority of it intentional. A 1/2 percent or so, I recall from studies (although I'd have to look again).

PS - Does someone whose ID differs by a comma from the information on the voters' list and who votes count as an "illegal vote"? It appears to some on DP that they do.
Perhaps they don't.
 
Last edited:
I couldn't be speaking of that, because it would be proof of divine intervention - a failure rate for any human directed process of just one in ten million - be it the US mail system, social security, or county voting - is ludicrous (or an American progressives delusion). Illegal voting are those ballots cast that are illegal; those cast by illegal aliens, non-citizen residents, felons, double voting, etc. the majority by mistake, a minority of it intentional. A 1/2 percent or so, I recall from studies (although I'd have to look again).

Perhaps they don't.

Those studies of "illegal votes" counted every vote which was cast by a person with the same name and birthday as an illegal vote (at best) and generally counted every registered voter with the same name and birthday as another registered voter as an illegal vote.

Do you know how many people have to make up a group for the statistical chance for two of them to have the same birthday is? It's 23 for 50%. If you have 75 of them the chance goes up to 99.9%. How many registered voters in the US have the same name as "John Smith"? Are all but one of those registered voters voting illegally?

The people who do the studies will tell you that they are.
 
Those studies of "illegal votes" counted every vote which was cast by a person with the same name and birthday as an illegal vote (at best) and generally counted every registered voter with the same name and birthday as another registered voter as an illegal vote.

Do you know how many people have to make up a group for the statistical chance for two of them to have the same birthday is? It's 23 for 50%. If you have 75 of them the chance goes up to 99.9%. How many registered voters in the US have the same name as "John Smith"? Are all but one of those registered voters voting illegally?

The people who do the studies will tell you that they are.

Notwithstanding your methodological criticism of unspecified studies, any system that treats voting legitimacy less seriously than checking IDs for a beer is not one that treats itself as sacred. The system that you describe in Canada makes simple but certain rules, without the insane 'after the vote' court battles over provisional ballots or in process fights over keeping certain polls open longer to mine more votes from favored neighborhoods.

The key to making sure there is voter legitimacy is not really one that photo IDs can solve, but it does lie in the voter registration process which, unfortunately, can take place outside of any supervision by almost anyone (I used to do it, working as a partisan).
 
Notwithstanding your methodological criticism of unspecified studies, any system that treats voting legitimacy less seriously than checking IDs for a beer is not one that treats itself as sacred. The system that you describe in Canada makes simple but certain rules, without the insane 'after the vote' court battles over provisional ballots or in process fights over keeping certain polls open longer to mine more votes from favored neighborhoods.

The key to making sure there is voter legitimacy is not really one that photo IDs can solve, but it does lie in the voter registration process which, unfortunately, can take place outside of any supervision by almost anyone (I used to do it, working as a partisan).

No system is perfect. I know that I have never had to prove my citizenship in order to be registered to vote. Not only that, but I was registered to vote (originally) under the provision of a WWII law which allowed me to vote (legally) almost four years before the remainder of my High School class could.

Whether "insurmountable" (a subjective term with highly variable meaning) obstacles are placed at the "registration as voter" or "being issued a ballot" stage are good things or not really depends on whether you want to encourage the widest possible voting (even if that means that "The Other Guy" gets more votes) or if you want to discourage the widest possible voting (especially if that means that "The Other Guy" gets fewer votes).

Saying something like "We don't charge a fee for providing the ID necessary to register to vote." sounds good, and if you "forget" the "Of course you have to pay the fees entailed in obtaining the documentation which we require in order to issue you the 'Free Voter ID'." bit it makes sense to require everyone to produce that "Free Voter ID".

PS - Without spending a great deal of my time doing detailed research, you might find "Kris Kobach used flawed research to defend Trump’s voter fraud panel, experts say" interesting.

105 cases over 5 years (that's 21 per year for the arithmetically challenged) or even 488 over ten years (48.8 per year) or even 983 over 70 years (14.0 per year) doesn't appear to constitute anything that anyone of any rationality could call "massive" (especially in light of the fact that over the 70 years literally BILLIONS of votes were cast (983 is 0.0000983% of 1,000,000,000).

In fact, it appears that the majority of the "voter fraud" cases were the result of people illegally "buying absentee/mail ballots" rather than of voters voting more than once (or when they weren't actually allowed to vote legally).

"Voter ID" will NOT prevent the "buying of absentee/mail ballots".

Since even the strictest Voter ID laws wouldn't have even the slightest effect on the outcomes of elections (there not being any actual problem to correct), one should look at the secondary effects of those laws which are reputed to be intended to "protect the integrity of the elections" - and the secondary effects of those laws has ALWAYS been to diminish the likelihood that people who might vote for "The Other Guys" would, proportionately, be less able to cast their ballots (and that is true REGARDLESS of whether the laws were passed by Republicans or Democrats).
 
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