“I am ready to pass the torch,” wrote Snipes, age 75.
Dr. Brenda Snipes was appointed to the position of Elections Supervisor in 2004 by then-Governor Jeb Bush. She was reelected in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
Snipes’s career was peppered with botched elections, legal disputes, and fierce criticism.
Recent critics include President Trump, Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R), Jeb Bush, and Rick Scott, whose campaign sued Snipes after a ballot box was discovered at the Fort Lauderdale Airport.
“They found 78,000 new votes since Election Day, two days ago, in Broward County, and 15,000 more votes in Palm Beach, we don’t know how many more votes that they are going to come up with, but it sure appears that they are going to find as many votes as they can to win the election,” said Scott. “So, I have asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to do an investigation. We filed a lawsuit, we are going to fight this, and we are going to win.”
Last Saturday, Snipes admitted that her office “lost” over 2,000 ballots that had been included in the initial tally. The final results – submitted just 52 minutes before the deadline on Sunday – confirmed Rick Scott’s victory over Bill Nelson and Ron DeSantis’s victory over Andrew Gillum.
The midterm drama is nothing new for Snipes, who earlier this year was confirmed to have violated federal law by destroying ballots from the 2016 primary elections too early. On top of that, the ballots were destroyed during a public records lawsuit from a losing candidate who wanted to take a look at the documents.
Snipes has also been accused of posting election results before polls closed, mixing rejected ballots with valid ballots, and removing key measures from ballots.
It will likely be up to Governor-elect Ron DeSantis to choose her successor. In the meantime, DeSantis should call for a special prosecutor to investigate the numerous instances of voter fraud to occur during Snipes’s tenure as supervisor.
Broward County was very close to throwing elections at the Governor and Senate levels this month. Every vote counts.