Brenda Snipes Walks With Almost $130,000 Pension

My take on Broward elections supervisor Brenda Snipes will walk away with almost $130,000 a year in pensions by Sun Sentinel.

Excerpt: Almost $11,000 a month. That’s what Brenda Snipes will be receiving in pension benefits when she resigns in January as the Broward County Supervisor of Elections. Snipes’s resignation came after she endured heavy criticism for Broward’s slow vote-counting after the Nov. 6 election and other issues...

Bottom Line: Where to begin. How about here, I’ll walk you back to the laws she broke a few weeks ago. Each bullet point is a broken statue of Florida election law. 

  • 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.   

That didn’t happen, nor was any expedited effort made to attempt to comply with the law.  

  • 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.  

Nope, didn’t follow that law either. That’s two.  

  • 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.  

Number three. 

  • 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  

The “corrective action” taken for these ballots, was for the Supervisor to unilaterally decide what voter intent was and have her staff fill out new ballots in their place. Florida law mandates that the canvassing board make these decisions.  

  •  Art. V, § 5 of the Florida Constitution and the Public Records Act.   

First, that it was unlawful to not provide a vote total for the election itemized by vote type. Additionally, it was found that Brenda broke the law by not being able to provide voter data publicly as mandated by Florida law.  

  • CONDUCTING ELECTIONS AND ASCERTAINING THE RESULTS -   

When Brenda Snipes personally placed 22 disqualified votes into a batch of eligible qualifying votes and tabulated them into Broward’s count, she violated all related election laws.  

And her punishment for this lawlessness, drama, anxiety and negative attention cast over Broward and Florida generally is, what exactly? A pension payout that’s over 250% higher than median household income in the county. Aside from the lack of accountability for public officials in South Florida, there's also clearly a massive abuse of taxpayers through pensions as evidenced by Scot Peterson’s six-figure per year send off and this Brenda Snipes absurdity. But will you demand better or will you continue to vote for this and personally pay for this? 

Photo by: Joe Skipper/Getty Images


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