"Not to worry guys.....with a beloved president like me campaigning for you, you'll slaughter Scott and DeSantis."
Posted on 11/16/2018 8:37:23 AM PST by edwinland
"Well designed ballot layouts allow voters to make their intentions clear; badly designed ballots invite voters to make mistakes. This year, the Florida Senate race may be decided by a misleading ballot layout—a layout that violated the ballot design recommendations of the Election Assistance Commission."
But humor him for a moment and read it all the way through. If his thesis is true, then the complete and total incompetence of the Democrats who run Florida cost them their ability to run Florida. Meaning that stupidity is self correcting.
You can’t really violate recommendations.
This is another media lie. They want you to think that the undervote in Broward would have all went to Nelson. There is just one problem with that.
Rick Scott received 10K less votes than DeSantis in Broward.
The undervote in Broward was evenly distributed.
Rick Scott would have won regardless.
I didn’t see anything remarkable about page 1 of Broward’s ballot.
I could see an argument that the poor design of a ballot (by Democrat) could be deliberate. If you have good examples and choose not to use them, that appears to mean that you have a reason to do that. Is it to give opportunity for fraud?
Any number of legal cases where the convicted get new trial for having a bad lawyer. Sound similar?
ML/NJ
I’ve seen that ballot; it clearly had a block for Nelson, one for Scott, and one for a write-in. What exactly was “flawed?”
Within Broward County, I would take a guess that 3-percent of the population...can’t read. So the ballot design may not matter.
I would make one easy fix. Put instructions at top left to right so senate race is left top corner lined up with other races.
It’s the most important and we read left to right.
"Not to worry guys.....with a beloved president like me campaigning for you, you'll slaughter Scott and DeSantis."
Remember Palm Beach County in the 2000 election fiasco and the infamous Butterfly Ballot design? I vividly recall one quote from an aggrieved voter about how he ALWAYS voted Democrat by punching the same hole. I believe that the voter was a recent move from up north where you could flip one lever(?) and vote solid party. No reading, no thinking needed!
There’s a misconception that Florida’s problem is the ballot COUNTING process. In fact, the real problem is that too many voters are too stupid to CAST votes correctly.
Of the undervotes, I’d like to know how many of those undervotes had votes for the Congressional race directly below. For example, did the voter skip the Senate race yet still vote for Alcee Hastings directly below? Then we’d be able to deduce that the voter just didn’t want to pick a honky.
Well - most would have ended up as votes for Nelson if the democrats had been able to fully carry out their PLAN-A.
Snipes has been the election supervisor in Browward for 15 years and knows exactly what she is doing.
Heck - she probably knows the laws, rules and mechanics of conducting an election as well as anyone in the state.
Any ballot design in Broward or Palm Beach Counties that leads to confusion and/or undervotes is intentional.
An intentionally confusing ballot creates undervotes for an office.
If the officials are corrupt democrats an undervote is a future democrat vote.
An undervote is just two blank circles on the ballot just begging for a cheater to ink in one of the circles and turn it into a vote.
After the polls close they can go behind closed doors and hand mark those blank votes as votes for the democrat.
Don't forget - Snipes has already been found guilty by a judge of violating election law by opening ballots by herself behind closed doors instead of doing it in front of witnesses as the law specifies.
Also, now that I think about it, the voters in broward were at a disadvantage this time around since they didn’t have corrine brown’s handy dandy “who to vote for” handout.....I’m afraid she’s out of circulation for a while.....well, around 5 years anyway.
Don’t forget - Snipes has already been found guilty by a judge of violating election law by opening ballots by herself behind closed doors instead of doing it in front of witnesses as the law specifies.
Why isn’t she in jail is what I wanna know.
The "infamous" Butterfly design was proposed by a Democratic county clerk in a Democrat controlled county. The design was submitted for review and approval to the Secretary of State, who happened to be a Republican. It was also reviewed and approved by both parties including, presumably, representatives of any candidate who bothered to take an interest. The fact that most people took the whole process for granted is no excuse.
The Butterfly design is therefore not a boneheaded stupidity that should be used to vilify a county-level election official. The design was not unique to Palm Beach County. It was not invented by anyone in Palm Beach County. I presume that there is, somewhere, a big sample book of design templates maintained by (to invent a name) The National Association of Do-Gooder County Clerks for Fair Elections. Or its functional equivalent.
In the case of Palm Beach County in 2000, the ballot was very crowded and more conventional designs would have required smaller print, which is a problem in the Geriatric State, or would have pushed some names to a second page, which is a HUGE disadvantage. The butterfly design saved space and got the presidential candidates all on the same page. It was a perfectly rational choice. It was used elsewhere around the country for similar reasons. There is nothing wrong with it. An arrow points from a candidate's name to the appropriate box to mark or punch. You can train a particularly stupid Golden Retriever to follow the arrow. Democrats should be able to manage it.
The hysterical attacks on the ballot design in the Florida fiasco in 2000 were entirely fraudulent. The attack was cynical disinformation intended to create smoke and persuade people that there was a problem, as a smokescreen for Democrats changing election law and processes after the fact. Every person who made this complaint was a deliberate liar or a perfect incompetent stooge, or both.
Actually, here’s my quick analysis that shows Scott would still have won, but Nelson did indeed lose a lot of votes in Broward.
Florida Statewide:
Total Votes for Governor: 8,217,818
Total Votes for Senator: 8,183,795
Difference: .4%
Broward County:
Total Votes for Governor: 708,955
Total Votes for Senator: 683,963
Difference: 3.5%
This would suggest that approx. 3.1% of voters in Broward (approx. 22,000 votes) missed the Senate box.
Scott got 30.9% of the Broward vote, while Nelson got 68.9%, so if the “missed” votes in theory were going to vote the same way as the general population, Nelson would have picked up 9,500 votes if the ballot was the same design as the rest of Florida.
Which is not enough to overcome Scott’s 12,000 vote lead but it would have put him within striking distance.
However:
Before the hand recount, when people realized this was a ballot issue not a scanner issue, Florida Democrats may indeed have expected to pick up 9,500 votes in Broward.
Which may well explain why the machine vote increases in Scott’s vote were “accidentally” submitted late in one county and set aside in another, Because those increases could have been critical.
Also note:
If Democrats are equally incapable of following instructions for designing ballots and instructions for filling them out, it’s entirely possible that almost all of those 22,000 voters were Nelson supporters, in which case comprehensive Democratic incompetence could have cost him the election.
Which would support my observation that at least in this one case, stupidity is self correcting.
There are two issues with that theory.
Some of the undervote is absolutely intentional. Other Florida counties had an undervote of .75% to 1%.
The other issue with that theory is the nearly equal distribution of undervote between Scott and Nelson.
Scott receive 10K less than DeSantis and Nelson received 10K less than Gillum.
I can’t figure why those numbers would be so consistent, other than some DeSantis voters missed the box too.
As for the other counties, I actually think that supports my thesis. If the average difference is .5% and the next highest difference is .75-1% out of 67 counties, then 3.5% is more than two standard deviations.
Nevertheless, good point about the 10,000 vote difference. I misunderstood that point in your earlier comment.
It’s really quite weird that the overall vote could 69% to 31% but the “undervote” 50/50. But yes, it’s hard to “allocate” the undervote any other way in that case.
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