For Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor, Another Gaffe

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher did it again.

She found a way to make an election aftermath scary-memorable.

Last Tuesday's election in Wellington is a mess, all races were tabulated incorrectly and guess what? They've already been certified. They're a done deal.

Voters who thought they were casting a ballot for the mayor, actually voted for a council seat 1 candidate; those who voted for the council seat 1 candidate didn't realize they were selecting for council seat 4; as for the mayor -- he got the council seat 4 votes.

Bucher told the press that the computer system "auto-generated" the order of the results -- a never-seen-before phenomenon.

So, naturally, Bucher -- world's most accident-prone or incompetent supervisor of elections, take your pick -- calls the errors "unprecedented" and none of her fault.

It was none of her fault, either, when ...

• of all 67 counties in the 2010 general election, Palm Beach was the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel dead last in processing its absentee ballots;
• or, in November 2010, a week after the election, 500 unopened absentee ballots were found in a box at the election tabulation center in Riviera Beach.
• or, after the Jan. 31, 2012, GOP Presidential Preference Primary, when somebody in her office credited Palm Beach County with a whopping 99.89 percent voter turnout on the state website.

Who won Tuesday night in Wellington? Who lost?

Wellington Village Clerk Awilda Rodriguez told me Monday she hasn't the foggiest. "I've certainly never seen anything like this," she said. "We're waiting for attorneys to take a look at election law to see how best to address the situation."

Read the column on this issue in today's Sunshine State News.
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