Florida election recounts bring out 'darker angels' as partisans sling unfounded claims

Editor's note: Corrects paragraph 26 to say that Katherine Toomey, a Washington-based attorney with Lewis Baach firm, has litigated several cases involving allegations of forgery, not ballot forgery. 

TALLAHASSEE – As recounts continue across Florida in top state races, Republicans are claiming fraud in the process and Democrats are making accusations of voter disenfranchisement.

The truth is somewhere in the middle and will be argued as lawyers for candidates on both sides fight to ensure legitimate ballots are counted, and state and federal laws are followed in a vote-counting process that can be highly subjective.

Republicans, including Gov. Rick Scott, who is narrowly leading Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in the Senate race, claim there already is proof of impropriety in vote counts, particularly in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi reiterated the case in a letter Sunday demanding that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigate claims that Broward’s Democratic election supervisor allowed ineligible ballots to be counted, blocked Republican lawyers from legally observing the vote-counting process and withheld absentee ballots from voters.

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Democrats have accused Scott and others of trying to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted. Nelson has sued to allow absentee ballots delayed by the post office to be counted, and his Democatric allies are challenging the process used to verify ballot signatures in federal court.

President Donald Trump, who supported Scott for Senate and Ron DeSantis for governor, turned up the heat Monday, tweeting that the recount should stop.

“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged. An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!” Trump tweeted.

Democrats cheered on social media after Andrew Gillum, who trails DeSantis by about 33,000 votes, tweeted back, “You sound nervous #Counteveryvote.”

The ongoing fiery political charges prompted Broward Circuit Judge Jack Tuter to urge both sides Monday to “ramp down the rhetoric” because he is concerned that the nasty fighting will leave citizens doubting the state’s election process. Tuter did so while denying Scott's motion to hand over custody to local and state law enforcement of Broward voting machines that were not in use during the recounts.

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“Recounts don’t bring out our better angels. They bring out our darker angels,” said Charles Zelden, a political scientist who teaches at Nova Southeast University in Broward County, the epicenter of the Florida recount dispute.

“That’s what’s happening here. It’s a scorched earth strategy,” Zelden said. “Both sides are bringing machine guns to a knife fight and mowing down everything in front of them to leave their enemy with nothing."

Scott launched accusations at Nelson and other Democrats last week outside the Governor's Mansion, claiming "rampant fraud" in Palm Beach and Broward counties. But for that to be true, he needs to prove local election officials have intentionally committed voter fraud, said David Becker, the executive director for the Center for Election Innovation and Research. 

Becker, who has led numerous investigations into violations of federal voting laws, said fraud is a legal term that requires intent, adding that an accident or incompetence by local officials is not a crime.

Snipes’ predecessor, Miriam Oliphant, was removed from office by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush after she botched a 2002 primary election. She was charged with 55 counts of election law violations, but those charges were eventually dropped because it could not be shown that she intentionally neglected her duties, according to news accounts at the time.

There have been irregularities in Broward that Republicans argue should be enough proof to launch an investigation. For example, Broward officials counted 22 rejected absentee ballots by adding them to a mix of 205 legal ballots, with Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes arguing it would be unfair to throw out all 225 votes because of the bad ballots.

“That’s not fraud. That’s a mistake, a big one,” Becker said. “There are always some votes that shouldn’t have counted for some reason or another. These numbers are always very small. There is no perfect system.”

Florida's imperfect system is now under the microscope, and not just in Democratic strongholds. Bay County, a heavily GOP area devastated during Hurricane Michael, included nearly 150 emailed absentee ballots in the vote total, despite state law prohibiting the acceptance of ballots by email unless they come from overseas or the military. 

“If you want to turn around and take away these votes away from voters because it’s not the normal proscribed issue, I would just say you ought to be ashamed of yourself because what we did is take care of voters,” Bay County Elections Supervisor Mark Anderson told WJHG, the NBC affiliate in Panama City.

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John Hanlon, the head of elections in adjacent Gulf County, said he hoped to allow displaced voters to cast ballots by email but dropped the idea when Scott's executive order loosening voting restrictions in the storm area prohibited it.

Under state law in Florida, there are strict definitions of what actions would constitute election fraud, including stealing and destroying records in an election, a law Snipes was found to have broken when handling ballots from the 2016 Democratic primary of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It was discovered during a contest to that election that Snipes had prematurely destroyed ballots in 2017 with the challenge pending.

Scott did not remove Snipes from office after the court ruled in May she violated federal and state law, but the state did monitor the county more closely after that.

On the other side, Democrats have called Scott a "dictator," claiming he's using his position as governor to interfere with vote counting and trying to stop legitimate votes from being counted.

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Scott and other Republicans argue they want every legitimate vote counted. They just want to make sure state and federal laws are followed. They argue improprieties already have been identified. They have expressed concern over voting laws being violated and that the process has not been transparent, particularly in Broward, where so many more votes benefiting Democrats were added to the totals days after the election. 

A state judge agreed last week with Scott that Snipes must immediately provide ballots and access to observers who want to monitor the process, something she had denied for two days.  

Other concerns have been raised about the legitimacy of ballots in Broward and elsewhere being included in the totals because of the subjectivity a local canvassing board uses when reviewing signatures on some ballots. 

Katherine Toomey, a Washington-based attorney with the Lewis Baach law firm who has litigated several cases of forgery, said it is imperative to have trained professionals verify signatures and not just local election workers “eyeballing” signatures.

Florida has no standard process used to verify ballot signatures.

“For an expert to make an expert decision on whether a signature is genuine, they have to look at maybe 10 or 15 original signatures to determine the variation of the signature,” Toomey said. “A signature can vary based on whether you are in a hurry, have alcohol in your system. They may very well be authentic, but vary a lot from one another.”

Toomey added that driver’s licenses, often used to match Florida voters' signatures, are a “notoriously bad” signature to match due to the bad resolution and space confinement.

In a statement Monday to the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida, DeSantis said he shares Floridians’ frustrations with the counties that seem unable to meet the vote count schedule outlined in law. He called the rule of law “foundational to our society.”

“As governor, I will work diligently with our legislative leaders to make sure that all Floridians have continued confidence in our election system and that we address the potential deficiencies that have caused this situation in a few counties,” DeSantis said.  “A crisis of faith in our election system should not be allowed to fester based on the actions of a few supervisors, and I will work to right this situation for future elections.”