Laws broken in Palm Beach County by Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher.
Bottom Line: Friday I brought you the story of the laws broken in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. That was then and as it turned out the lawlessness was just beginning. There have now been so many laws broken it requires breaking out this story into two parts. One for each criminally corrupt Supervisor of Elections. These are all of the violations of election law broken in Palm Beach County.
To begin with, the supervisor of elections shall upload into the county’s election management system by 7 p.m. on the day before the election the results of all early voting and vote-by-mail ballots that have been canvassed and tabulated by the end of the early voting period. Like Broward, that didn’t happen, nor was any expedited effort made to attempt to comply with the law. In other words, not only was this illegal, it was a blatant disregard for the law.
Next up, the canvassing board shall report all early voting and all tabulated vote-by-mail results to the Department of State within 30 minutes after the polls close. Thereafter, the canvassing board shall report, with the exception of provisional ballot results, updated precinct election results to the department at least every 45 minutes until all results are completely reported. The supervisor of elections shall notify the department immediately of any circumstances that do not permit periodic updates as required.
Once again, not only did none of that occur, there was a blatant disregard for the law as no effort to come into compliance with it was ever made. If the county canvassing board determines that the unofficial returns may contain a counting error in which the vote tabulation system failed to count votes that were properly marked in accordance with the instructions on the ballot, the county canvassing board shall:
(a) Correct the error and retabulate the affected ballots with the vote tabulation system
This was another element of malfeasance that was similarly shared with Broward. In Palm Beach County, rather than the canvassing board making judgments about damaged and/or erroneous ballots, it was Susan Bucher and her team unilaterally creating their own standard. On Saturday, Chief Justice of Florida’s 15th Circuit Court, Krista Marx ruled this activity to be in violation of the law.
Art. V, § 5 of the Florida Constitution and the Public Records Act.
On Friday, Susan Bucher’s office continued to violate reporting standards for over and undervotes as mandated by law along with total ballot information. Florida’s 15th Circuit Court also ruled that Susan Bucher had violated the law and ordered compliance by 7 pm. Not only was no effort made to comply with the ruling, Susan Bucher instead requested an emergency hearing Saturday morning to ask for additional time while standing in substantial non-compliance with Florida law or the court ruling. Once again, Susan Bucher was found to have been in non-compliance with the law and court ruling.
What we’re left with is a minimum of six violated laws and a court order by Palm Beach County’s Elections Supervisor. Like Brenda, incompetence and older equipment may be used as an excuse for this not being deliberate. Even then it’d be criminal incompetence, but once you’re made aware of your incompetence and choose not to comply with the law anyway, that’s blatant. Let me be crystal clear. Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, has presided over substantial illegal activity. There needs to be full accountability under the law.
Photo by: Joe Skipper/Getty Images