MSNBC's Joe Scarborough calls GOP's effort to stop counting votes in Florida 'third world'
Donald Trump just threatened to use ”law enforcement” in order to get the election results he wants in Florida, regardless of his having no authority in this state matter. Rick Scott, who just ran to his buddy Sean Hannity to declare “fraud” with no evidence whatsoever, has announced that he is working with Trump and the GOP to stop the legitimate counting of votes. He is suing the Supervisors of Elections in Broward and Palm Bay because … reasons.
Joe Scarborough called it what it is.
“Rick Scott is freaking out. He doesn’t want ballots to be counted.
This is third-world country stuff coming from the Republican Party.”
Scarborough also went after Marco Rubio, who can always be counted on to tote Trump’s water. Rubio posted a bizarre Twitter screed attacking the SoE for still counting votes, and even said that the Democrats are “stealing the election.” Scarborough said Rubio “actually wants to make sure that Florida citizen’s votes aren’t counted.”
This, from the guy who constantly whines that people aren’t “civil” to Republicans, yet has no problem engaging in an InfoWars-level conspiracy.
Couple things worth noting here, Marco:
- Counting all votes isn't “stealing an election.” It’s called democracy. There were a lot of shady things about the Florida election, but mostly, they dealt with dropping thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls, denying hundreds of thousands the right to vote, intimidation at the polls, forcing election volunteers to be handwriting analysis experts, and forcing thousands to take provisional ballots just because they had a name change or an address change.
2. Your smear against Broward County elections official Brenda Snipes left out one thing: She is a GOP appointee. Jeb freaking Bush put her in that position, and it's pretty doubtful he would have picked someone “out to get” the Florida GOP.
And by the way, Rubio, you are either ignorant of the laws of the state you represent, or are just plain lying.
— Dan Sweeney (@Daniel_Sweeney) November 8, 2018
3. The person who would oversee the recount is Ken Detzner, whom Rick Scott appointed to office—after his predecessor quit in disgust over Rick Scott's voter suppression laws in 2011. Detzner has previously worked very closely with Scott to suppress votes, but there are no complaints from the GOP on that.
Detzner gets to decide if races meet the legal threshold for a recount. He is already planning on refusing. His Division of Elections director, Maria Matthews, gave a snarky answer when counties asked if they could start the recount now to save time.
- The undercount vote in Broward County is the most underreported story of the midterms. Yes, a handful of voters are passionate about Commissioner of Agriculture and ignore the top ticket races. Here’s the deal: there are VERY few of them. For some reason, in blue Broward county, there were 24,000 of these people. It is extremely likely that those ballots have marks on them that were not counted, but would be caught in a hand recount.
If the margin is .5% or less, it will be a machine recount. If it is .25 percent or less, it will be a manual recount. This is mandated by Florida election law. Scott is trying everything to stop not just the recount, but the actual count itself, before the noon deadline on Saturday.
