2018 ELECTIONS
Election Law Professor Schools Rick Scott for Attacking ‘Unethical Liberals’ Who Just Want All Votes Counted
“Rick Scott had 8 years to improve Florida’s system of election administration.”
Florida Governor Rick Scott‘s campaign for the U.S. Senate didn’t do as well as he may have hoped. The vote count, which is still ongoing, is so close it looks like a recount will have to take place.
Republican leaders, including Gov. Scott, President Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, and GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel have been ranting about the vote count in heavily-Democratic Broward County, hoping to get it to stop.
Gov. Scott on Thursday “falsely accused Democrats of trying to “steal this election” and called on law enforcement to monitor the counting of ballots in two of the state’s most Democratic counties,” Mother Jones reports. “He also filed a lawsuit, along with the Republican Party, seeking access to Broward County’s ballot records. His unsubstantiated allegations of ‘rampant fraud’ were amplified by top Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who tweeted, ‘Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach.'”
“Every day since the election,” Gov. Scott also claimed, “the left-wing activists in Broward County have been coming up with more and more ballots out of nowhere,” for which there is no proof.
“I will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try and steal this election from the great people of Florida,” Scott said, speaking as both governor and the political candidate in the race.
As it turns out, for years Broward County has been a problem. Some point to technical issues, while Republicans are currently focused on the Broward County Supervisor of Elections.
Which is where election law expert Rick Hasen steps in.
A Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, Hasen is the go-to expert on election law and voting.
And he has a mouthful for Governor Scott.
“Rick Scott had 8 years to improve Florida’s system of election administration,” Hasen says, for starters.
“Two things can be true at the same time: Broward county is incompetent in counting votes and there is no evidence of intentional fraud,” he adds, via Twitter.
He’s not done, either.
Take a look:
As a reader points out, Scott had the ability to remove Broward’s elections officer before the election and chose not to.
— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) November 9, 2018
I see @MarcACaputo reported back in May that Scott had ordered state election officials to monitor Broward elections. Did that happen and if so what does the monitor say? https://t.co/Q3cgJtjGh0
— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) November 9, 2018
Hasen also retweeted this smackdown from an NPR News reporter:
This is how elections work. It can take days, weeks to count all votes — mail ins, provisionals, etc. That’s what’s going on now, as always. Alleging without evidence that something nefarious is going on, at the very least, shows a lack of knowledge about how elections work. https://t.co/fjy57uwKK4
— pam fessler (@pamelafessler) November 9, 2018
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