A similar case to the Seminole case just got put on Judge Lewis' docket. You remember Judge Lewis, he's the one who said that Secretary Harris did not abuse her discretion. Hers starts at 8:30 Wednesday, he is starting his at 7:00 a.m., breaking at 8:15 a.m. to let the lawyers get to Judge Clark's courtroom, then when she is done for the day he will resume the hearing before him and will stay as long as it takes to finish up Wednesday night so he can rule then or on Thursday.
I don't know if you have taken the time to familiarize yourself with the facts of the case, but here they are in a nutshell.
Apparantly it is common for both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party to mail blank requests for absentee ballots to party members who they think have need them. They get the requests printed up by an outside vendor.
The ones that the Republican vendor printed up didn't have a blank for the voter to put in his/her voter ID number, so when they came into the county elections office, the law required the staff to mail them back to the voter and ask for the number to be filled in.
In both counties, Republican activists came into the county elections office and filled in the blanks rather than have the staff send the requests back. The staff was glad to let them because that meant they didn't have to mail back all those request forms (thousands, I understand).
Once the request forms were properly filled in, the elections office staff mailed the ballots to the absentee voters, and then the absentee voters mailed the ballots back.
At NO time did any party activist touch a ballot.
I got into it a couple of times with Dems who couldn't find a place in the Florida law that made this illegal. I trust you will make the effort.
There is no way now to know which ballots, if any, and I concede there are probably some, were mailed to absentee voters and then mailed back. So if any of the votes are disqualified, they may well be ballots which did not occur as the result of any impropriety (if any). If all the votes should be counted, why should the innocent voters have their votes disqualified?
If someone did wrong, why not punish the county elections office staff and the Republican activists? |
