Broward County still a Banana Republic, blocks candidate from observing recount

At least one person was disappointed she didn't get to see Broward County elections officials finish hand-counting 95,855 ballots in a judicial race Sunday in Lauderhill.

Ellen H. Brodsky, an unaffiliated candidate challenging incumbent Brenda Snipes for supervisor of elections in the Nov. 4 general election, said she arrived about 2 p.m., driver's license in hand, to be an election observer.

Exactly what happened next is disputed. Brodsky says she was disenfranchised; elections staffers say she was disruptive. They agree on this: Brodsky was banned from the building, unable to see Mardi Anne Levey win a runoff spot for Group 3, Broward Circuit Court.

"I've been sitting in the parking lot all afternoon," Brodsky said during a cell phone call to the Sun Sentinel from outside the elections warehouse. After the manual recount, Levey nudged past Pedro E. Dijols, her competitor for the judicial post, by a final tally of 72 votes to snag second place. The top vote-getter on Tuesday was Bernard Isaac Bober.

Run Ellen Run

 

"Get it Right on Election Night!"

Elect Ellen Harriet Brodsky Non-Partisan Candidate for Supervisor of Elections, Broward County.

Ellen H. Brodsky is the Founder of the Broward Election Reform Coalition and is a member of the Florida Voters Coalition. She is a member of the League of Women Voters, the Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform, and the national VoteTrustUSA Leadership group.

Ellen is a longtime Election Integrity activist, advocating Voter Verified Paper Ballots since 2001. She has opposed Broward's purchase of untested, unverifiable, and unreliable Touch Screen Voting Machines from the start.

Ellen served as an Election Clerk and Voting System Technician since 2002.

As a key member of the Florida Voters Coalition in 2007, Ellen mobilized thousands of Florida Voters to "Dump the DREs" (Touch Screens) and pass Voter Verified Paper Ballot Legislation aimed at decertifying them in Florida.

Ellen also created the Parallel Election Projects, a citizen-run grassroots vote auditing program - the first of its kind in the entire United States. Ellen's efforts have caught on throughout the state of Florida and into the rest of the country. In Jan. 2008 she coordinated Broward's historic ProjectVoteCount.com, the nation's first official citizen exit-poll, inspired by the Parallel Election Projects.

I believe that Florida will always be a banana republic as long as they have this partisan elections system and as long as you have to be a politician to be in charge of the machinary of elections. Its time to join the 21st century and depoliticize the elections administration process.  That is what Ellen Brodsky is trying to do in her run as an independent, to run for the people, not the parties. 

If you want to see election transparency in Broward County, help Ellen Brodsky's campaign