We still don't know the full story about the ballots destroyed in Broward County Opinion [View all]

[Sancho]

I had concerns, as did others, and as a result, I asked to inspect the ballots cast. Election officials refused my several requests to see the ballots, and after months of delay, we filed a lawsuit under Florida’s public-records laws. Three months later, Broward County election officials simply destroyed all of the thousands of ballots cast in my race. The Circuit Court subsequently ruled in my favor and found that the ballot destruction violated state law, Florida administrative regulations and federal law.

The destruction of those ballots was a federal crime, and the destruction of public records during a public-records lawsuit is a crime under state law. Yet, not one state or federal law-enforcement agency has conducted any investigation into Broward’s illegal destruction of the ballots cast in my election.

Ion Sancho, former Leon County elections supervisor, believes that cyberattacks are not our biggest problem. According to Sancho, Florida does not properly audit its vote-counting machines, but instead simply assumes the machines are accurate when counting or recounting votes. “If the software is tampered with, what do you think is going to happen if you rescan the ballots? You’ll get the same answer back,” Sancho said. “The presumption that the voting machine is already correct is a silly presumption to begin with. It guarantees you won’t find the problem, if there is one.”

Since Floridians votes statewide on paper ballots, Sancho says we can always verify the machine counts with a proper audit of the paper ballots. But that means enforcing laws that require ballots be retained and made available for inspection. It is time for state and federal law enforcement agencies to do their jobs and investigate Broward County’s illegal destruction of all paper ballots cast in our 2016 primary.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article230626404.html?fbclid=IwAR32XShZZgH7mmVhkZ6WwEhvm3QFuDh0Twto62BbVTH89nkD0Lat3gKP-Lo#storylink=cpy