Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes. | AP Photo Fla. election official sued over potential ‘cataclysmic’ medical-marijuana ballot error

A marijuana decriminalization group sued Broward County’s election supervisor Thursday for a potentially “catastrophic and cataclysmic” error that could endanger Florida’s highly popular medical-marijuana initiative at the ballot box.

In one instance so far, a voter provided proof that the proposed Florida Constitutional Amendment 2 was nowhere to be found on her vote-by-mail absentee ballot, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.


Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes — whose office has been criticized for two other printing snafus recently — acknowledged there might have been a “mistake,” but she told the newspaper that she doesn’t know how widespread the problem is and that she could find no evidence it happened with other voters.

So far, more than 60,000 Broward voters have cast absentee ballots. Another 189,000 absentee ballots have been mailed to voters in the county but not yet returned. There are nearly 1.2 million voters registered in Broward.

Broward — Florida’s second-most populous county — supported medical marijuana the most in 2014, when voters passed it by a margin of almost 159,000 votes. Though the measure received 57.6 percent support statewide at the time, it failed because state constitutional amendments need to pass with 60 percent of the vote in Florida.

Recent polls have shown the medical marijuana amendment garnering 70 percent or more support this year.

“Every voter and vote, therefore, is critical,” Norman Kent, an attorney for Florida’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), wrote in his emergency petition to the local circuit court filed Thursday.

“The end result of this error is catastrophic and cataclysmic as it applies to this ballot item, effectively disenfranchising voters and eliminating the right to vote on certain matters which have been lawfully placed on the ballot,” Kent wrote.

The head of the group pushing for the initiative, Orlando attorney John Morgan, said he would consider filing his own lawsuit, perhaps in state court in Tallahassee, and petition for a complete re-vote statewide. He said he wanted to speak with an election-law attorney first.

“I need to see what my options are including litigation to have this entire matter reviewed including the possibility of a new vote,” Morgan told POLITICO Florida.

He said he wondered if Snipes’ office intentionally messed up.

“Broward County was our best county last time. And I don’t believe in accidents,” Morgan said.

Under the suit filed Thursday, NORML wants a court to order Snipes’ office to determine which voters were sent ballots without Amendment 2 on them, explain how the error occurred and to print and distribute new absentee ballots that only ask about Amendment 2 to all voters who have received the faulty vote-by-mail ballots.

The supervisor then, theoretically, would have to adjust the vote-tabulation machines to count only the special Amendment 2 ballots.

Any potential remedy carries the possibility for more complications, however.

Snipes couldn’t be reached by POLITICO Florida for comment. She told the Sun Sentinel earlier Thursday that her staff searched but could find no evidence of an inaccurate ballot sent to voters.

"We have a check-and-balance system. We can go back and see what we did send to the printer," Snipes told the publication. "When you're dealing with this much paper and this many people, we may have made a mistake. But I haven't heard a lot of people saying 'I don't have it either.'”

But Kent, the NORML attorney, said her explanation doesn’t make sense.

“When you go into a restaurant and something is not on the menu, you don’t order it,” Kent said. “You can’t vote on something that’s not there.”

Amendment 2 appears on a sample ballot on the supervisor’s website. But that’s a generic online publication. Ballots are tailored for voters depending on the precinct or city they live in.

The problem was caught by a former city commissioner in the city of Oakland Park, Anne Sallee. She indicated to the Sun Sentinel that Snipes’ office wasn’t very responsive to her complaint when she noticed that her ballot was missing Amendment 2. When she called to complain, she said, Snipes’ office blew her off.

“Oh, no, you're mistaken. It's there,” an elections office worker told her, according to Sallee.

So she finally went to the local newspaper and sent a picture of her faulty ballot as proof.

Snipes’ office earlier sent out inaccurate voter identification cards and it printed ballots on a countywide tax question that include the word “no” in the “yes” line, the Sun Sentinel noted.

With a history like that, Kent said, he has little faith that this problem is limited to just one voter or one ballot.

“You can’t make this stuff up. It’s Florida,” Kent said. “My first reaction was: Were they high when they printed these ballots? This is ridiculous.”

To see the lawsuit filed by the Florida chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) against the Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, click here.