The chorus of elected and appointed government officials denying what the vast majority of us witnessed on election night 2020, permeates the landscape here in Florida. Recently, Governor DeSantis said, “What we do in Florida is, there’s a pre- and post-election audit that happens automatically…So, that has happened. It passed with flying colors in terms of how that’s going.”
Also, singing from the same song book is Lake County Supervisor of Elections, Alan Hays, who writes, “Today, many Americans ascribe to the belief that an election was stolen.” Hays, who opposes doing a forensic audit continues, “Each election is audited by randomly selecting a contest to audit then randomly choosing the prescribed number of precincts for the audit. Then ballots are hand counted in those precincts related to the selected contest. We have a long-running record of 100% accuracy!”
Yes, per Florida election statute, risk-mitigating audits are required to ensure accurate election results. However, this assumes that an audit of a number of statistically random samples applies to the entire sample, all ballots. This type of audit does not analyze all ballots, it only extrapolates that the sample audit applies to the whole. Risk-mitigating audits do not perform analysis of each and every ballot to determine their legality. A forensic audit would determine the legality of each and every ballot that is counted.
If we witnessed anything in election 2020, it is that our entire election system is fraught with flaws, from registration to voting to counting ballots. These systemic flaws did not happen overnight nor inadvertently. Our election system is engineered over decades and we, the citizens, have allowed it. Subsequently, the chorus continues by our elected officials; nothing to see here, not in my backyard (nimby), this election was the most secure election in history, Florida is an example for the rest of the country.
Today, we are left with an inadequate election system, inherent with defects or opportunities for those who choose to cheat. Known defects exist in the maintenance of voter registration records, defects in chain of custody for vote by mail ballots, flaws in voter citizenship authentication, flaws in voter signature authentication, defects in machines used, both scanners and tabulators. And the most significant flaw is that there exists no viable enforcement mechanism for those who choose to cheat. To date, no one has been held accountable for the cheating we witnessed in the 2020 election.
The truth is that our Florida electeds have not taken a look, so we nor they actually know how our election system performed in Florida in 2020. We do know that to-date, we have zero legislative or executive leadership in Florida taking action to confirm that we did in fact count only legal ballots, as prescribed by law.
A forensic audit of counties in Florida outlined by Representative Anthony Sabatini in HB 99 is our next best step to confirm or deny that only legal votes were counted in Florida in the 2020 election. This is a reasonable request from the citizens of Florida and merely a call on elected officials to prove what they say is true. At this point, we citizens may or may not trust, so we must verify. To do otherwise, is irresponsible and leads only to the further demise of our essential election system.
These are not ordinary times, thus extraordinary measures are required. We must all take action to audit the vote as called for in HB 99.
