Amid reports that Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher sent out some 60,000 faulty absentee ballots, there's one question no one else seems to be asking -- and which Bucher hasn't mentioned: What did she know, and when did she know it?
The latest elections kerfuffle in a county that has seen more than half a dozen election irregularities since 2000, now involves 60,000 absentee ballots sent out -- all of them missing the proper headings for the merit-retention races of three controversial state Supreme Court justices.
The three justices, Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis, and Peggy Quince,are accused by critics of being left-wing judicial activists, and because absentee voters are traditionally Republican-leaning, this latest error raises concerns that they might miss out on receiving several NO votes.
Sunshine State News contacted ballot printer Runbeck Elections Services and spoke to Kevin Bannon, the companys president. He said earlier this year, Buchers office had sent Runbeck faulty drafts and later corrected them, but that a printing error on the part of the company resulted in the defective ballots. Runbeck has taken responsibility for the misprints, and will foot the cost for the measures the supervisors office will take to manually count the returns. Recipients of the defective ballots will not be receiving new, corrected ones.
Buchers office announced the mistake Wednesday, nearly a week after the ballots began arriving at voters residences.
Didn't anybody from the SOE office check for errors as soon as the ballots came back from the printer?
Did Buchers office know the ballots were defective before they were mailed out? If not, then why werent the ballots reviewed beforehand, especially given the fact that mistakes had already been made in the drafting process?
No matter. A number of political camps, including President Obama's, is looking at the ballot mess, attempting to gauge its effect on their candidates.
Buchers office isnt talking, at least not to Sunshine State News, which left her several unreturned messages before Thursday evening.
For at least the last 12 years, the countys Democrat-managed elections office has distinguished itself for being among the nations most notoriously scandal-ridden.
Under supervisor Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County was at the center of the 2000 presidential election hanging chad controversy. Her successor, Arthur Anderson, accumulated numerous mishaps:leaving an entire local election offof a 2006 ballot; causing numerous elections delays, including 3,500 missing ballots in a 2008 judicial race; raising questions over how the office spent federal money; and admitting in May, four years after he was voted out of office, that he had the county purchase optical scan ballot systemsafter knowingof serious concerns raised by Californias secretary of state about their defectiveness.
Buchers tenure has seen more of the same:
- of all 67 counties in the 2010 general election, Palm Beach wasthe last to processits absentee ballots, 10 days after Election Day;
- a week after that election, 500 unopened absentee ballots were found in a box at the election tabulation center in Riviera Beach;
- in March, Buchers office announced her offices voting equipment had completely scrambled the results of local elections in Wellington;
- and her office is currentlythe subject of a lawsuitby state Rep. Mack Bernard, a business-friendly Democrat particularly well-liked by state and county Republicans, who is accusing Buchers office of improperly discarding at least 48 absentee ballots which, if counted, might have won him his partys August primary.
My concern right now is whether this is all just going to be an excuse to invalidate absentee ballots, says J.C. Planas, Bernards attorney, in an interview with Sunshine State News. Do I think that this goes toward my argument that Palm Beach County is not following all of the elections rules? Yes, I do.
Planas was unwilling to accuse Bucher of outright fraud, but he said he does find this string of mishaps troubling, especially since they tend to disproportionately affect Republican or conservative-leaning voters.
More Republicans than Democrats vote absentee; to give you an example, [GOP presidential candidate] John McCain won the absentee ballots four years ago in Palm Beach County, he says. You have to wonder whether this is an attempt to throw the baby out with the bathwater and invalidate absentee ballots based on this issue [of the misprints].
I cant question motives, but you have to wonder just how many things [the supervisor of elections office] is getting wrong, he continues. I think thats a big part of the issue.If Buchers got these ballots wrong, and she got the election in Wellington wrong, then shes probably interpreting the law wrong [in Mack Bernards lawsuit].
Faulty ballots are not the only troubles facing Buchers office. She is currently facing a race discrimination lawsuit by a former employee, an African-American hiree from previous supervisor Andersons administration.
The lawsuit says that Bucher's treatment of African-American employees was based on "racial antipathy against her African-American predecessor and employment decisions and selections he made." It claims non-African-Americans were treated more favorably.
The suit was filed just a couple of weeks after a political consultant from one of Floridas major bipartisan consulting firms suggested to Sunshine State News that state Rep. Mack Bernard and at least one other Haitian legislator might be the victims of a political ethnic cleansing" by state Democratic Party officials because of the two representatives' voting record in favor of businesses and school choice.
Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.
