The Broward county election supervisor – an African American, Democrat and woman – has been accused of everything from incompetence to fraud

There is no doubting the villain of the piece. Outside the interminable ballot recounts in Broward county, a sign shows elections supervisor Brenda Snipes with the slogan: “Supervisor of corruption.” Another: “Snipes = systematic sabotage.” A third depicts Snipes with her face, arms and body plastered with “I voted” stickers.

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Snipes has become the lightning rod for the acrimony surrounding three statewide recounts and a fusillade of lawsuits in the battleground state of Florida. The fact that she is African American, a woman and a Democrat does not simplify matters.

“I’m going to come right out and say it,” tweeted John Cardillo, a conservative broadcaster. “If Brenda Snipes was a white man, she’d have been removed from office long ago.”

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Lawyers for the Republican governor, Rick Scott, locked in an agonisingly close Senate race with incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson, have accused Snipes of fraud. State monitors and the Florida department of law enforcement say they have found no evidence to support that claim.

Nevertheless, she remains a scapegoat for Republicans and others who see this as merely the latest in a long history of blunders. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who appointed her 15 years ago, has called for Snipes to be ousted.

When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong. She’s very competent but in a bad way Donald Trump

Donald Trump agrees. In an interview with the rightwing Daily Caller website on Wednesday, the president described Snipes as a “disaster” and said: “When they call this woman incompetent, they’re wrong. She’s very competent but in a bad way.”



On Wednesday, recounts were still in progress for the Scott v Nelson race and for the gubernatorial election between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis. Outside, in a car park behind an ageing shopping mall, about 25 protesters had gathered. The air was thick with grievance, rumour and anger.

“Brenda Snipes is a career criminal,” said Janet Klomburg, 56, wearing a “Trump 2020” hat and “Trump” T-shirt. “She has a history of illegally denying ballots.”

Klomburg and other protesters say Snipes is including votes that should not be counted and excluding votes that should. Asked if Snipes’s gender and race was a factor in the controversy, they were adamant in saying no.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters sit outside Broward county election offices during a ballot recount in Lauderhill, Florida. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

“Are we racist, Carla?” asked Klomburg, turning to Carla Spalding, a nurse and teacher who was a Republican candidate for Florida’s 23rd congressional district and claims her name was omitted from some ballot papers.

Spalding, who is African American, replied emphatically: “Absolutely not!”

Klomburg and others said they had spent countless hours as election volunteers and wanted to ensure the process was done right. Spalding accused liberals of always playing the race card.

“Whenever they can’t find anything else,” she said, “they always say it’s race. So I’m a racist and I’m black!”

As a protester showed a photo purporting to show Snipes standing beside the local Democratic congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Spalding said: “There’s a deeper issue no one wants to address here. I believe Debbie Wasserman Schultz has secrets. She’s committed to Brenda Snipes and so they cannot fire her.

Snipes, 75 and from Talladega, Alabama, moved to Broward county in 1964. According to her website, she became an area director in the public school system, leading principals from 16 schools. She was appointed to the supervisor’s position by Bush in 2003 after the previous supervisor was accused of malfeasance and removed.

Even her defenders would be hard pushed to claim it has been a smooth ride since.

In the 2004 presidential election, about 58,000 mail-in ballots were not delivered, requiring workers to hurry to replace them. A week after the 2012 election, about 1,000 uncounted ballots were suddenly discovered.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Employees at the Broward county supervisor of elections office count ballots during a recount on Wednesday. Photograph: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Earlier this year, a judge ruled that Snipes broke election law by destroying ballots in a 2016 congressional primary involving Wasserman Schultz, without waiting the required 22 months.

Tim Canova, a university professor who lost that primary and went to court to request access to the ballots to check them for voting irregularities, said on Wednesday: “Brenda Snipes has not dealt honestly with me and my campaign since 2016. She concealed the destruction of the ballots from us and the court for more than two months.”

Canova assumed Scott would fire Snipes after the court ruling but he did not.

“I’m hearing it through my attorney – he was the go-between – that the first excuse was he didn’t want to fire her because she is an African American woman. My view was, what does that have to do with it? He can replace her with an African American woman or someone else. He’s going to be running for the Senate and he’s afraid of alienating people, but this is his constitutional responsibility.”

The 58-year-old believes elections under Snipes cannot be trusted and she should be dismissed.

“If they keep her in office, it doesn’t just open the door to actually rig elections, cover up, engage in incompetent election management. It undermines the public’s faith and confidence in the elections and it’s done that completely.

“I’m not saying that Brenda Snipes is a mastermind. I don’t think she’s attentive to detail. There’s a whole apparatus working around her that could be fixing elections and destroying ballots and she just lets it happen. ”

I’ve worked here for about 15 years, and this the first time that this office or I have been under such attacks Brenda Snipes

This year, Snipes’s office sent out a sample ballot that did not resemble the real ballot used on election day. She has also been blamed for a poor design that appears to have caused thousands to vote in races other than the Senate one. There have been contradictory claims over whether some invalid ballots got counted. Last week, a judge found Snipes had violated Florida open records laws by failing to quickly provide voting records to lawyers for Scott’s campaign.

Snipes’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But on Monday, she told reporters: “I’ve worked here for about 15 years, and I have to say this the first time that this office or I have been under such attacks. There have been issues that haven’t gone the way we wanted it. You can call it a mistake or you can call it whatever you want to call it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brenda Snipes, left, speaks with Judge Betsy Benson, canvassing board chair, before the start of a recount of all votes in Broward county. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Getty Images

A day later, she hinted to reporters that she might not run for re-election in 2020.

“It is time to move on,” she said, then quickly added that no final decision had been made. Asked by the New York Times if her race was a factor in the backlash against her, she replied: “I won’t say, ‘Oh, I am a black woman!’ I’m not saying that. But there are factors that stand out a bit more than others.”

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Raquel Rodriguez, a partner with the Miami office of law firm McDonald Hopkins who served as Bush’s general counsel, said she believed the general criticism of Snipes is fair.

“I don’t think that any race or gender has a monopoly on competence or incompetence: it’s situational,” she said. “Her predecessor was actually suspended by my former boss Governor Bush and then removed from her position by the Senate.

“I was involved in that and I can tell you that the grounds for her removal from office were far more benign and less extensive than what has gone on in the Broward office in this cycle and in other cycles.”

Rodriguez, a lead lawyer for Republicans in Miami-Dade county during the Bush v Gore election in 2000, did not, however, accuse Snipes of deliberate fraud.

“I’ve interacted with her office over many election cycles,” she said. “I never got the impression that there was a deliberate attempt to subvert the process. It could be many levels removed from her. I don’t have any personal knowledge on which to base an opinion as to whether there’s fraud or not by the supervisor.”