When Wolves Count Sheep: Florida’s Election Integrity Is A Lie And Both Parties Are In On It
Excerpt:
For years, we have heard the refrain: “Florida is the gold standard for election integrity.” It is a neat soundbite, promoted by party operatives and echoed by political insiders on both sides of the aisle. But it is a dangerous lie, and the data proves it.
At a recent meeting, Hillsborough County State Committeeman Paul Elliott confidently cited a Heritage Foundation ranking that placed Florida third in voter integrity nationwide. But anyone with boots on the ground, especially in high population counties, knows the real story.
Florida is not a monolith. While roughly 60 of Florida’s 67 counties conduct relatively clean elections, those are predominantly rural, single party areas. The real manipulation occurs where power is concentrated: Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Osceola, Orange, Broward, Pinellas, and Alachua counties. These are breeding grounds for what many call Florida’s election mafia.
Take Hillsborough County in 2024. Incumbent Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, a Democrat, lost both early voting and Election Day turnout by over 30,000 votes. Yet somehow, he emerged victorious solely through vote by mail ballots. Latimer received 129,245 vote by mail votes, while Kamala Harris, on the same ballot, received only 119,666. He even outperformed Donald Trump by nearly 1,000 votes. How does a down ballot local candidate outperform both presidential tickets? Where is the scrutiny?
This is not an isolated anomaly. Across multiple counties, local candidates, particularly Supervisors of Elections and their allies, magically outperform top of ticket races with vote by mail as the delivery system. Take Osceola County, where all constitutional Democrat candidates won their races despite Republican sweeps elsewhere. All five key offices — Sheriff, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector, Supervisor of Elections, and Clerk of Court — outperformed both presidential candidates, all via vote by mail. This is the same county where the Osceola County Sheriff was recently arrested on racketeering charges related to gambling. And it is not just Democrats playing this game.
Both parties are complicit.
Instead of investigating these discrepancies, Republican leadership in Florida often seeks ways to leverage the broken system for their own benefit. That is not election reform. That is opportunism dressed up as patriotism. Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Powers says they are “peeling the onion” on election integrity. But it is worth noting that Mr. Powers sits on the board of Ramba Consulting, the firm that operates Florida Supervisors of Elections, Inc., a quasi government professional group that meets quarterly to establish state election policy.
Consider the 2024 Hillsborough GOP State Committeeman race. Paul Elliott, a former judge, longtime friend of Latimer, submitted incomplete paperwork at the last possible minute. Instead of being disqualified, as his potential competitor and incumbent were, the Supervisor of Elections office stepped in and notarized his forms. Everyone else was on their own.
Meanwhile, the incumbent committeeman, highly supported by grassroots Republicans, was disqualified over a minor paperwork issue. Where is the equal treatment? Why was Elliott allowed to skate by while others were tossed aside?
This is corruption, plain and simple.
And it goes deeper. In multiple counties, official election reports have been quietly edited. This was recently discovered in Hillsborough County where the official summary report bears clear signs of editing, with remnants of those changes still visible.
These manipulations are not only unethical, they represent a direct threat to transparency and auditability.
This is a system that rewards loyalty to the machine, not to the truth or to voters. And it starts at the top.
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, the chief elections officer in Florida, was not elected by the people; he was appointed. Yet he has the authority to dictate policy to all 67 elected Supervisors of Elections across the state. Think about that, an unelected bureaucrat issuing marching orders to elected officials. That is the antithesis of a gold standard.
We need to stop parroting feel good slogans and start dealing with reality. Florida’s elections are not secure. And anyone continuing to push that narrative, knowingly or not, is an enemy of transparency, accountability, and democracy itself.
The fight is bigger than party politics. It is about whether the people still have a voice or whether the fix is already in.
.....There is no doubt that Florida’s elections are deeply at risk, and the very people charged with safeguarding their security are the ones undermining them. The wolves are counting the sheep. It is time to choose a side.
Cannabis use linked to doubled risk of cardiovascular disease death
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-cannabis-linked-cardiovascular-disease-death.html
Excerpt:
Cannabis use is linked to a doubling in the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, with significantly heightened risks of having a stroke or acute coronary syndrome—sudden reduced or blocked blood flow to the heart—finds a pooled analysis of real-world data, published online in the journal Heart.
The authors of a linked editorial call for the drug to be treated like tobacco—not criminalized, but actively discouraged, with protection of bystanders from secondhand vapor inhalation.
The use of cannabis and cannabinoids has soared over the past decade, note the researchers. Legalizing cannabis in certain jurisdictions and expanding its use for medicinal purposes has probably changed people’s risk perceptions of the drug and helped drive its growing popularity, they suggest.
.....To strengthen the evidence base, therefore, the researchers scoured research databases looking for large observational studies, published between January 2016 and December 2023, which explored cannabis use and serious cardiovascular outcomes: cardiovascular disease death; and non-fatal acute coronary syndrome to include heart attack and stroke.
From an initial haul of 3,012 articles, 24, involving around 200 million people, were included in a pooled data analysis of the results: 17 cross-sectional studies, six cohort studies, and one case-control study.
Study participants were mostly aged between 19 and 59. And in those studies where sex was recorded, cannabis users tended to be mostly male and younger than non-users.
The analysis revealed heightened risks for cannabis use: 29% higher for acute coronary syndrome; 20% higher for stroke; and a doubling in the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
.....More research is clearly needed to clarify whether cardiovascular risks are limited to inhaled products or extend to other forms of cannabis exposure, they suggest. Cannabis is now generally more potent and has diversified into a wide array of inhaled high-potency cannabis concentrates, synthetic psychoactive cannabinoids, and edibles, they point out.
“How these changes affect cardiovascular risk requires clarification, as does the proportion of risk attributable to cannabinoids themselves versus particulate matter, terpenes or other components of the exposure,” they say.
They conclude, “Cannabis needs to be incorporated into the framework for prevention of clinical cardiovascular disease. So too must cardiovascular disease prevention be incorporated into the regulation of cannabis markets. Effective product warnings and education on risks must be developed, required, and implemented.
Cardiovascular and other health risks must be considered in the regulation of allowable product and marketing design as the evidence base grows. Today, that regulation is focused on establishing the legal market with woeful neglect of minimizing health risks.
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