Joe Henderson
Since declaring things seems to be the rage in the Florida election during these tense days, I am declaring everybody involved in the whacked-out mess needs to shut up.
Yes, it’s a debacle. More than likely some heads need to roll. But it wouldn’t hurt for those seeking some of the highest offices on the ballot to stop throwing around unproven charges of robbery and voter fraud before we even know who won.
We need more statesmen, less deep state, please.
No need to fire up the base with incendiary accusations you don’t have to back up. You’re not campaigning anymore. Let’s get through this.
We’ll start with Rick Scott and explain that just because you’re ahead and declare victory, it doesn’t mean you won. By that logic, a football game would end with time on the clock as long as his team was ahead, even if the other side was driving for the winning score. If officials won’t declare his team the winner until the game actually ends, they must be cheating.
That’s basically what Florida’s Governor sounds like with his protests that “unethical liberals” (proof, please?) are trying to steal his U.S. Senate race with Bill Nelson. Spewing dark conspiracy theories about the Broward elections office does no one any good.
That said, the Broward Keystone Kops approach to this Florida election is infuriating, and there is bipartisan support for using the word “incompetent” to describe that operation. But it’s a leap of serious proportions to go from that to some underhanded chicanery worthy of, oh, I don’t know, something the Russians would do.
While we’re at it, both sides in the Agriculture Commissioner’s race might also want to chill until the results are certified before declaring anything more than their love for Florida orange juice.
On election night, Republican Matt Caldwell decided he had seen enough and congratulated himself with this statement: “I am proud that Floridians have entrusted me to serve as their next Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services.”
Um, not so fast sir. The sun may have come up the next morning but that didn’t mean all the votes had been counted. As that process wound on, Democrat Nikki Fried took the lead and, sure enough, declared victory. 
“The will of the voters was heard, and the people’s choice is clear. I’m humbled and honored to be elected Florida’s next Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, as the first woman to have ever been elected to this position,” she said.
Not yet.
The only thing either side should be talking about now is how to ensure the multiple recounts that will determine Florida’s next Senator, Governor, and Agriculture Commissioner are done properly. Both sides have lawyered up as everyone settles in for Hanging Chad 2.0, so even when the recount is complete the outcome won’t be settled.
I sense a lot of new Ferraris are about to appear in the driveways of lawyers assigned to work on this case. They may be the only winners in this embarrassing process.
Maybe the state is too fractured for anything resembling unity to ever be possible. That’s the underplayed story after Tuesday’s vote. The Florida election affirmed what we already knew. It is basically 50-50, with both tribes dedicated to the utter destruction of the other.
No matter the outcome, half of the people in Florida are going to hate the other half. The answer from both parties seems to be a big so-what? As long as their side gets to call the shots, they figure it’s worth being loathed.
This may be the new normal.
Republicans will never accept a recount that doesn’t name Scott, Caldwell and Ron DeSantis as the winners. They will forever believe a rogue elections boss in Broward robbed them. I can almost hear the chant “lock her up, lock her up” being directed at Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes — and she does seem to routinely make a mess of these things.
The Miami Herald reported her office mixed more than a dozen rejected ballots with 200 good ones in this election. A judge ruled she illegally destroyed paper ballots from the 2016 congressional election involving Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Democrats will never accept a result that doesn’t at least have Nelson and Fried winning — Gillum remains a bit of a long shot — because, well, they hate Republicans and don’t need much more reason to believe than that they were cheated.
Solution?
Hire lots of lawyers.
Oh wait, that already happened.
Well, I declare!
4 comments
Bill
November 12, 2018 at 6:20 am
The difference between voting and a football game is you actually can score more points in one teams favor. Where ar in an election there is a finite amount of “points”.
Fed Up
November 12, 2018 at 6:35 am
Rick Scott, the pot calling the kettle black on his ethics charge. What a whopping joke following the billion dollar fraud he perpetrated on the Medicare system.
Richard Paul Dembinsky
November 12, 2018 at 9:17 am
Bill Nelson, I am a life long democrat, my “name was on the ballot” (write in for CFO)…..I refused to vote for Bill Nelson or for that matter Gillum, I have a write in ballot on my desk, unopened. I was also displeased that Dorothy Hukill back in 2016 knew she had bad cancer but ran anyway, but then not attending 1/2 of the session, then she decided to run again….why the Republicans did not ask her to step to the side so a new Republican could have his name on the ballot, no she ended up being on the ballot…look at the total number of votes in State Senate District 14, I had 73,499 in 2016, but it appears, less people voted dorothy hukill’s name on the ballot did not get the 158,000 she won in 2016. Does this mean…Republicans did not vote in Volusia County, is that why Gillum is close or even Nelson. I believe up until Rick Scott started picking on Liberals after the votes came in has made me displeased I did not vote for Bill Nelson, Really does it matter Trump will do whatever he likes. WE DON’T care they don’t do anything for the people anyway.
mck
November 12, 2018 at 3:23 pm
I’m an NPA, and I actually voted for you, however, perhaps I should regret that choice as you are taking sides, which I assumed you were above. Had I known you were a lifelong Democrat, I would not have voted for you.
I can only assume you went write-in, because (a) you were the write-in the Democrats were using to close the primary, assuming the Democratic crook (as opposed to his Republican crook opponent) ran unopposed, or you that are a Tim Canova, who jumps ship, because you know you have no chance of winning a primary.
Course, if I had left it blank, some a$$hat would be arguing I am a half-whit, who can’t read or understand a ballot. I’m in Broward, it wasn’t hard–now, the amendments, and especially the charter provisions, were hard, because of the number of languages, but the people part was simple, unless you are a nincompoop.
And the racism gushing out from Democrats, who assume that African Americabs are too feeble-minded to vote or sign their names, is disgusting. Gillum is a self hating black man, who believes only he can read a ballot. Obama never screamed racusm once and never said African Americans are too dumb to vote.
You want to extoll Democrats for taking the high ground? The Democrat running against my NPA friend for State House, a little nobody with no money, stold every one of her signs, sent out a mailer saying she was anti-choice, ran in the district solely because her own district had an incumbant Democrat and the incumbant in ours was term limited. She moved here 6 months ago, 2 months before the deadline. She was an anti-trumper, blue-waver, women’s marcher, who didn’t even vote in 2014 or 2016, infact in her 6 years in FL, she has never voted. I’ve had Democrats literally spit on me for voting for Stien, but they readily voted for someone who didn’t vote at all.
Bill Nelson sponsored a bill that would have made it a federal crime with a mandatory 20 yr sentence for supporting BDS. Regardless of whether you argree with people who feel what is happening in Palestine a genocide, he wanted to make the 1st Amendment a felony with a setence greater than rape. So yeah, bravo.
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