Report: Florida County Official Allowed 150 Hurricane Victims to Cast Illegal Ballots

An elections official in Bay County, Florida, allowed 150 hurricane victims to cast their votes through email and fax—despite there being no state law allowing it, according to a report.

The Miami Herald reported Monday that Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen allowed 150 voters displaced by Hurricane Michael to cast ballots by either email or fax.

Andersen said Bay County’s board of elections accepted 11 emailed ballots and 147 ballots sent through domestic fax, and he is defending his decision despite a state statute banning emailed ballots and only allowing military and voters located overseas to fax in ballots.

The Bay County elections supervisor said that all the ballots had verified signatures and officials required all voters to sign an oath.

“If I can validate it with a signature, the ballot is there, how is that different than a ballot that comes in through the post office?” Andersen remarked.

“When devastation happens, leaders rise to the top and make decisions,” he added. “I will not change my mind on this, not for these voters.”

Bay County, which is located in Florida’s panhandle, is a Republican stronghold. The Herald reported that Florida Republican Rick Scott won 74 percent of the vote in Bay County.

Scott issued an executive order on October 18 allowing election supervisors in eight hurricane-affected counties—Washington, Liberty, Jackson, Gulf, Gadsden, Franklin, and Bay— to expand the number of early voting locations and extend early voting hours.

But the executive order did not allow voters to cast ballots via fax or email.

Florida’s Department of State released a statement along with Scott’s executive order stating that email and fax voting would not be allowed:

Voting by fax or email is not an option under the Executive Order. In the hardest hit areas, communication via phone, fax, and email remains challenging and would be an unreliable method for returning ballots. Additionally, past attempts by other states to allow voters impacted by natural disasters to fax or email ballots have been rife with issues.

Several Florida counties have been hit with voter fraud allegations as state officials ordered recounts for the state’s tightly contested Senate and gubernatorial elections.

Broward County’s election supervisor, Brenda Snipes, accidentally mixed more than a dozen invalid ballots with nearly 200 valid ones on Election Day and had also been accused of keeping felons, dead people, and noncitizens on Broward County’s voter rolls.

A judge also ruled that Snipes violated state and federal law for destroying ballots in a 2016 congressional election between former Democratic National Convention (DNC) chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).