Posted on 11/15/2018 6:29:13 AM PST by Liberty7732
In a victory for the campaign hopes of U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a federal judge has ordered all of Florida’s elections officials to give nearly 4,000 voters — or more than, no one is sure — whose ballots were rejected over mismatched signatures until Saturday to fix the problem and for their votes to count.
Judge Mark Walker ruled early today that apparently all of the state’s elections offices have wrongly, or unconstitutionally, applied the state law governing how voters can fix rejected signatures on absentee and provisional ballots. There were a known 3,700 ballots rejected in the Midterm election after canvassing boards determined that the signature on a mail-in or provisional ballot did not match the signature the state had on file for that voter.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s campaign sued last week to invalidate the signature rejection process, amid a series of lawsuits attempting to change Florida voting laws through the courts and push more votes into the final tallies.
Judge Walker issued a 34-page order granting a temporary injunction at the request of the Nelson campaign, and directed the state’s supervisors of elections to gives these voters until 5 p.m. Saturday to “cure” the problem.
The law had given voters had until the day before the election to fix the signature issue. So this ruling does change state law for this election, as it allows votes to be counted after the law said they cannot be.
If these are all Democrat votes, and most of them likely will be, they alone would not be enough to flip the two major elections. But they would get it closer.
In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott is leading Nelson by 12,562 votes, or 0.15 percent. In the Governor’s race, Republican Ron DeSantis is up 0.41 percent, or 33,684 votes, on Democrat Andrew Gillum.
However, and this is a really big caveat, it isn’t really known the total number of ballots that were rejected or mismatched signatures. Only 45 of Florida’s 67 counties had provided totals to the court on mismatched signatures during Walker’s hearing on the lawsuit last week. So it will likely be higher, but how much higher, no one knows.
Scott’s campaign is appealing Walker’s order. But that does not seem likely to change anything at this point.
Further, Judge Walker is scheduled to hear more lawsuits, including a challenge by Nelson to the state’s procedures for counting overvotes and undervotes. The Nelson campaign is confident they will close the gap through the overvote and undervote process, and more so if they can change the process.
The Nelson campaign is also suing to extend today’s deadline for Florida’s elections supervisors to get their recount totals to Tallahassee.
Obama appointee of course.
The Senate needs to refuse to seat Nelson. Can they do that to an incumbent cadaver?
Florida — Banana Republic, USA.
Not a bana republic. Think Uganda under Idi Amin or Zimbabwe under Mugabe
I dont see why not.....they've done it before.
Even if all 4,000 votes go to Nelson, he’d still be down by 8,500 votes. This is an exercise in futility and needs to be ended.
They could potentially add nearly 4000.
Its not a done deal.
Jail for judges who make ruling without legislative law to base it on. Jail.
This ruling is being appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
So, the signature matching requirement is a ruse? Or is he just ignoring the established law?
The Democratic mantra: Keep on counting until we win.
It is not an exercise in futility.
The exercise is to establish as many precedents as possible to assure future fraud goes forward.
There is no recourse other than death for the fraudsters. The law is being destroyed
I expect the Democrats to push for a rule that says: If he loses by only a small margin, then it’s almost like he won, and on that basis he should be seated instead of his opponent who, after all, failed to win by a significant margin and is therefore disqualified.
As we repeatedly learned in 2000: The State Legislature governs the rules for selecting State office holders for Federal Office — that is what the Constitution says SHALL HAPPEN. Judges inventing something different will just by overturned.
Dictator Judges have to GO !!!!
Send state troopers out to cure those ballots. Let’s make sure those are legal votes
Its a principle and precedent they are setting for 2020 - every ballot that appears from anywhere must be counted. Even if it doesn’t impact this outcome it continues the destruction of election integrity. That’s their true goal, not Nelson’s career.
The Judge may wish for them all to be counted but did not want to bare his throat with that order.
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