ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Money may not grow on trees, but in Florida, apparently voter ballots do.

“Miraculously” for far-left gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum and entrenched liberal Sen. Bill Nelson, some 78,000 votes appeared in the office of Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes after election night was over — after GOP candidate Ron DeSantis had been declared the winner of the gubernatorial race and GOP Gov. Rick Scott had won the Senate race.

Thanks to those magically appearing ballots, the margins of victory for Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Scott fell low enough over the weekend to trigger an automatic recount across the state that is now underway.

The complexity of a recount means that the results won’t be reviewed by state officials until Nov. 20, leaving plenty of time for local liberals and their big shot lawyers, who are swarming into Florida like flies, to try to steal both elections. (By the way, one of those lawyers is Marc Elias — the notorious Democratic lawyer linked to the phony Trump dossier.)

Broward County failed to finish counting its ballots on election night for one reason: to wait for the Florida Panhandle votes to be reported so the operatives would know if they needed to “discover” new ballots.

We all sadly remember how several Panhandle counties were decimated by Hurricane Michael just a few weeks ago. There was massive flooding and destruction of homes, streets, businesses and even some polling locations. Yet those counties managed to count and report their votes within a few hours of the polls closing.

But liberal Broward County is still counting. (Maybe it should change its name to “Broward Counting.”)

There was also mischief in the liberal bastion of Palm Beach County. Its supervisor of elections — avowed Democrat Susan Bucher — took unclearly marked absentee ballots out of sight, where she proceeded to determine on her own, in violation of Florida law, the voter’s intent of each ballot. Is it any wonder that the majority of those votes ended up being counted for Mr. Nelson and Mr. Gillum?

When Mr. Scott demanded information on the new Broward County ballots, Ms. Snipes refused to disclose where they had come from, how many people actually voted, or even when she would finish counting them. Mr. Scott filed a lawsuit against Ms. Snipes and another one against Ms. Bucher.

On Friday, a judge ruled that Ms. Snipes violated the Florida Constitution and ordered her to provide her ballot collection records. As of Saturday, she had refused to say if she has more uncounted ballots.

Also on Friday, a judge ordered Ms. Bucher to provide the absentee ballots in question to the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board for a public review of each ballot. She, too, is stalling.

Meanwhile, elections for two of the highest offices in Florida are stuck in the Democratic Party’s socialist quagmire of corruption. This liberal hijacking of Florida’s elections is the first step in their plan to thwart the 2020 presidential election.

Because Florida is pivotal, the Democrats will stop at nothing to gain control of the state. Florida also provides a lesson in how critically important it is to have law-abiding citizens in local positions. The old phrase “I wouldn’t vote for him for dog catcher” is the ultimate insult of a candidate running for high office.

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps “dog catcher” is pretty insignificant. But what about a local supervisor of elections? It seems like a dull, relatively diminutive position — and not so long ago when average Americans were “Americans first” — it probably was.

But in the current hate-filled “resist” and “antifa” era, we can see how easy it is to throw the results of a Senate and a gubernatorial race into chaos when dishonest people have local power.

Of course, these socialist tactics were test-driven by Ms. Snipes and the liberals 18 years ago in the Bush v. Gore fiasco. This year, they’ve been fine-tuned. George Soros and his far-left buddies know precisely how to create chaos and steal elections.

That’s why when most folks were only paying attention to the national elections this year, the socialists were pouring millions into local elections around the country with the aim to take over cities and counties and states — not only to establish socialist policies town-by-town, but to have their minions in place, ready to steal elections where possible, and delegitimize the results of those they can’t.

• Rebecca Hagelin can be reached at [email protected]

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