This is the second part of a three-part diary about my experience as an observer of the Florida Recount 2018 in Broward County, Florida. It was very interesting and I recommend participating in a recount to anyone if you ever have the chance.
If you haven’t read it yet, Part I is available to read here.
Part II of Broward County Recount Diary continues the narrative from Part I.
I apologize in advance for the lack of interesting photo content.
Sitting At The Table
When last we left, I was sitting at a table, in a room with 99 other such tables. It was a large room. On the warehouse floor of the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office and HQ. In Lauderhill Florida. And there were six people at that table. It looked something exactly like this:
The four facing the camera are party observers, the two with their backs to the camera are county employees and are the only ones in this part of the process allowed to handle ballots. Let’s for ease call them the ‘counters’ (although they don’t actually do the counting part). Altogether we make up the “counting team”.
Before I continue the narrative, let me just first say that all the ballots in Broward County were of the “fill-in-the-oval” type. Also, to reiterate what’s been said before about these hand counts: No, we do not look again at every single ballot. The count from the machine recount is used, and if the two top candidates are within a .25% margin of the machine recount, all the over- and undervotes are put into these envelopes by precinct to be looked at and anything found added to the total for the appropriate candidate.
An overvote is a ballot that has more than one clear indicator for a candidate. I actually saw one of those. A ballot with a completely filled-in oval for both Rick Scott and Bill Nelson. No one on the team objected. How could anyone? It was textbook overvote, so it went into the “No Vote” pile.
An undervote is when a person fails to make an indication at all in a given race. That’s pretty clear and straightforward, like the first ballot I witnessed after getting seated. The counters called it a “No Vote” and none of the party observers objected. The ballot went into the “No Vote” pile.
The process was this: A runner would bring a manila envelope of ballots to the table. The counters would handle them, get them in a position where we all on the observing side of the table could see them, even if upside down, and we would go through them. When we had finished that batch, the counters color coded each different type of ballot with a sticky note and papercliped multiples of the same type of vote together, put ‘em back in the envelope and a runner picked them up and delivered them to the canvassing board’s inbox. There they had someone tally how many found votes were in each envelope (by precinct), how many overs or unders, and any ballots undetermined by us were looked at by the canvassing board made up of lawyers from both teams and county officials.
It didn’t take long, going though those batches of ballots, to very quickly see a pattern start to emerge: There was nothing to object to, because for a majority of what we looked at, there was nothing there. The republican observer and I did not object to a single thing we saw at our table. A handful of votes for Nelson. One vote for Scott. The aforementioned person who carefully filled in the oval for both candidates. And our favorite, whoever it was that wrote in for the senate race his or her vote for “The People”.
It really doesn’t take long to say “Nope, nothing there” and properly code and bundle stuff as such, especially when you have 100 full tables of workers plus running and support staff, so the count ended early Friday. Super early. Like 10am early. So early, lunch wasn’t there yet.
I politely waited in my seat for a bunch of others to leave first, despite having a splitting headache and thinking some food and water would help. Eventually I got in line and slowly made my way to the exit. Lunch was not there as we were an hour and a half early, and I wasn’t keen on staying despite the promise of free food. As I exited the building, I couldn’t help but hear the music. The crowd in the Free Speech Zone had increased, and now included something that almost, but not quite, resembled a band.
The Republican Freak Show
The ‘band’ was a guitar player, a male singer, a female singer, and a saxophone player, all black, all wearing “Blacks for Trump 2020” T-shirts. They were performing just under the huge American flag on some sort of mechanical hoist that got it about 20 to 25 feet off the ground. High enough so when it flapped in the breeze, it didn’t whack them in the head.
I don’t remember what song they were playing when I came out, but after they finished that one, the lead singer on the mic said some stuff I couldn’t hear and then something about the national anthem, and then something about not wanting any kneeling, and then tried to start a chant that sounded like “neely, neely, neely”. It didn’t particularly catch on.
Then, their sax player started to play the Star-Spangle Banner. On soprano sax. And he started it too high, so he had to switch octaves down, then back up, constantly, throughout the entire rendition, to which I said “why not pick a better key, dude? There’s plenty others to choose from”. And it sounded like a kazoo. I am not kidding. His tone was buzzy, tinny and, well … kazooey. Some people around them started to sing part way through, and they were pretty awful too. Granted, it ain’t the easiest song in the world to sing, because, range, but even when they were singing notes that were in their range, lots of them were out of tune.
Now, near the end of this, someone climbed up the hoist over the American flag and released a bunch of red balloons. And after that, from that perch, he started throwing glitter.
Once that extravaganza was over, they went into the megamix of “Stand By Me” and “Stand By Me” and “Stand By Me”. The singers had OK enough voices, but the girl singer often seemed lost. The sax player used his alto sax for this number and improvised a reasonable enough solo, but the whole package was just … yikes. I wanted to go ask if they were being paid, not because I cared if the Republican party was funding them, but because if anyone was paying them, they were throwing away their money. This ‘band’ was simply awful.
But at least they kept Guy With Cardboard Cut-Out Trump off his bullhorn, because apparently he’s been living outside the county elections office since just after the general election, and he gets on the bullhorn and yells at the workers when they come out for lunch that they should go back to work and stop wasting the taxpayer’s money, and also apparently yells stuff like “why aren’t there any white people working there?”.
Then there was the guy with the red inflatable “Brenda’s Ballot Box” about the size and shape of, well, the Tardis, for all you Doctor Who fans, or “about 3 foot by 3 foot by 8 foot” for those of you who don’t know what a Tardis is. It had a transparent panel where you can see pieces of paper flying around inside, and a sign off to the side that said “Brenda’s Ballot Box” and something about ballots flying around. This thing is plugged into power somewhere. I didn’t follow the line to see where, but it’s in a parking lot, so …? Same with the band. Where did they get the power for their amplification system? In a parking lot? Did they bring their own generator? I don’t know, I didn’t ask, I didn’t check. I had a headache, so did not stay for lunch, and went home.
Next Day — Commissioner of Agriculture Race.
In what must be a first, the Ag Commissioner’s race went to recount. We were asked back Saturday morning, bright and early again, this time with firm instructions “Really, don’t even try to bring anything, just leave it in your car”. Which was a shame because I put new batteries in my camera, wanting to get pictures of the Republican Freak Show. The leaders meeting us in front said there wasn’t much going on, but maybe there would be after we were done, like yesterday, and then I could come back to my car and get my camera. I got a car lift around to the back this time instead of walking, and the scene, still in the dark, was much less busy than the previous day. The Bikers for Trump were gone, the big hoist that had had the flag was gone, Brenda’s Ballot Box was gone. The tent/awning with the DeSantis/Nunez signs was still up but with fewer of the signs visible, and just three or four stalwart people holding signs of some sort I don’t remember exactly.
The republican side of the line was decidedly less populated. This time when I went in the building, they didn’t even bother to have us sign in or give us a visitor’s sticker like the previous day. I did notice when I got my Democrat Observer sticker (I was #70) that that’s about what number the stickers were up to on the republican side.
On this morning, they were still filling tables and the counting had not started yet. I was the only observer at my table for a while, then a young blonde republican woman was seated at the table with me. Shortly thereafter, the “Master of Ceremonies” on the counting floor (either a county judge or lawyer whose name I didn’t catch), ran through a very fast PowerPoint overview of our job. Each table also had two printout copies of the slides for the observers at the table to have as reference.
Then out came the ballots. This counter had a slightly different method than the counter the previous day. She diligently verified the race on the front of the envelope, then took out all the ballots and sorted them the same way and side up, the side with the race we were counting on it, of course. Then through the pile we went, with her circling the race with her gloved finger, and then leaving it clear for a moment for us all to see and decide. The first one, she says “No vote” and hands it to the other gal to color code with the yellow sticky and put it in the “No Vote” bin, in case there might be others.
And there were. Stacks and stacks and stacks of them. Entire envelopes filled with not a single vote for Ag Commissioner. And there were also several envelopes we got with just one ballot in them, every one of those blank for the Ag Commissioner’s race as well.
Our table never sat a second observer from either party, but several tables did have three or all four observers before the count finished. I am certain all 100 tables had at least one observer from each side. To be honest, I was a little apprehensive about being the sole person to perhaps challenge a ballot (not much of a profile in courage, am I? I need to work on that). But like the previous day, there was simply little to challenge. As in the examples, we did see people circle Nikki Fried’s name instead of filling in the bubble — but then we look at the ballot and see this person did that for every race, so into the pile of votes for Fried it went. I’d say we put more ballots into her box that morning than I had for Bill Nelson the previous day, but I was seated somewhat late in the process for that count so I can’t say for certain. But not a one did we put into the tray for Caldwell.
We did have two minor excitements that I’ll relate before closing out this portion of the story.
First, I got to object! Yes! One ballot came in with a very clear bubble filled in for Fried, in fact, even going over the lines a bit. But there was also a fairly substantial mark in the bubble for the opponent. The counter wanted to call it an overvote and I objected! We started to go over the rules and look at the ballot for consistency and very soon a couple of floor observers came over (I think they were also lawyers) and they said it’s a legitimate challenge so off to the canvassing board that went.
The other excitement was that about 45 minutes after we had started counting, the canvassing board found it had just started to tabulate an envelope that said “U.S. Senate Race” on the outside.
So the board spokesperson asked everybody to stop counting and raise their hand if they had an envelope at their table that said “U.S. Senate” on the outside. One table near me did and there might have been one more at the back. We paused for at least twenty minutes, during which time I found out more about one of the counter’s personal life than I cared to, like the two recent deaths in the family and her daughter hiding her pregnancy from her. The republican lawyer from the canvassing board spoke a little later, suggesting they might have to discontinue the count and reset it and start again tomorrow. But after they talked amongst themselves for another ten or fifteen minutes, they apparently decided it would be OK to continue.
Even with that, we were done before 10am. This time they anticipated correctly, and had lunch already out there when we exited. Sandwiches, bag of chips, cookie, water bottles, cans of coke, (regular and diet). Veggie wrap was available for non-meat eaters. Looks like the republicans used the same catering company.
Sadly(?), the Republican Freak Show was pretty much gone. So I did not go get my camera. Only a handful of people with signs, including some that had some derogatory things to say about Dr. Brenda Snipes, but more about that in Part III.
So, that’s basically what participating in a recount is like, or at least was for me here in Broward County 2018. I’d love to hear what people have to say about their recount experiences in different counties in Florida, or wherever and whenever you may have participated. Any questions are also more than welcome.
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Part III, coming soon, will be reflection on the total experience and contain the best analysis I can muster of what I actually saw on the ballots as they passed by — and what it might mean for Florida’s future.