You supposedly won’t have Brenda Snipes to kick around anymore. The subject of one of the more famous “Florida Woman” stories of late is reported to have resigned her position as Broward County Election Supervisor, taking effect in January. After numerous, spectacular failures in processing election results over the years, Saturday’s debacle of submitting their recount results two minutes after the deadline had passed was apparently a bridge too far and Ms. Snipes is stepping down. (Washington Times)

The Florida county election chief who came under considerable fire for incompetence and possible corruption during this month’s recount battles reportedly resigned Sunday. Brenda Snipes, the election supervisor for heavily Democratic Broward County, submitted her resignations just hours after submitting final, contentious tallies in the state’s governor and U.S. Senate races, both of which Republicans won by razor-thin margins. “It is true. She did send it,” Burnadette Norris-Weeks, an attorney who works as a counsel to the Supervisor of Elections Office, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Taking a page from the playbook of disgraced public officials around the country, Snipes reportedly wants to “spend more time with her family” and listed that as the reason for her departure in her resignation letter. Questions still remain concerning roughly 2,000 ballots that were somehow “lost” when the machine recount was underway. Other observers (and protesters) claimed that she may have missed the Saturday deadline intentionally because the Democrats had wound up losing votes in Broward County rather than gaining them. The truth of those situations may never be known.

But what does she blame for the backlash that had been coming her way? In one interview she was asked if racism was a factor and she said it probably was. It sounds better than intolerable incompetence I suppose.

You could tell that Snipes was a problem nobody wanted to own up to. In a recent feature on the recount, Andrea Mitchell claimed, without evidence, that Snipes was a Republican and “hardly a Democratic official.” While she may have originally been appointed by Jeb Bush, Snipes has been running for and winning both primary and general elections as a Democrat for years. Now I suppose they’ll have to find someone else to fill the position.

We should keep in mind that this isn’t going to solve Florida’s election problems. Brenda Snipes was a symptom, not the source of the issues they face in Broward County. They need new machines in place for 2020 as well as a top to bottom review of all their procedures. Nearly all the other counties in Florida were somehow able to hold their elections, tally the votes and even conduct recounts in a timely fashion while complying with state laws. There’s no reason that Broward and Palm Beach counties can’t do the same. It simply requires the will to address their challenges and make the needed changes.