November 12, 2018

Without naming names, Fox News co-host Kennedy ripped into Florida's leadership for the SNAFU elections that seem to always be about Florida.

But wait. Rick Scott and a Republican legislature have been in charge for eight years.
It's the Republican Party of Florida who has not prepared for the Florida midterm elections to run properly.

Republicans have neglected their election infrastructure and nurtured this chaos.

After Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins ran a piece dedicated to the Florida recount, co-host Kennedy threw the former administration under the bus.

By the way, it would have been nice if Kennedy didn't waffle and actually put Rick Scott's name to the problems we are seeing now. The fact that post-election he's trying to play the victim, crying about voter integrity and fraud, when he was the governor in charge for two terms.

Kennedy said, "In Florida, as in many other states. it goes county by county and they are allowed to have whatever system of voting and vote counting they want. There's a lot of discretion left up to the county and I understand why Bill Nelson and Rick Scott are both so upset because we have seen what can happen in Florida.

She continued, "We know these elections are so close. We know they are razor-thin, and all of the polling shows that coming into these two races and so has history and If that's the case, make sure that you've got systems in place that are functioning. that is not a big ask. You know it's going to come to this. So make sure you've got voting machines that work. make sure you got ballot-counting machines that work. make sure you have people in place that know how to..."

Another way to look at it is that Gov. Scott allowed this mess to happen, knowing full well that his chances of winning election to the Senate and DeSantis winning the governorship were too close for his liking. And that the best way to accomplish a Republican win is to suppress the vote by leaving the vote counting a mess.

Snipes is a convenient scapegoat, but she was re-elected multiple times under Scott's administration and was appointed by Republican Jeb Bush.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I might claim that their racist catcalls against Snipes are cover while they attempt to steal these two elections.

Florida Democrat Representative Ted Deutch (FL-22) tells CNN how dishonest Gov. Scott has been for with years of trying to rig the elections for Republicans in Florida.

REP. TED DEUTCH: Here is what there is evidence of. There's evidence of eight years of Rick Scott as governor of Florida trying to manipulate the outcome of elections. He did it by making it harder to register voters. He did it by making the number of voting places -- by reducing the number of early voting locations. He did it by making sure that students couldn't vote in college by trying to purge 200,000 voters from our voting rolls, including a World War II veteran, a constituent of mine. The governor now, John -- this is important. The governor has now actually taken the unheard of approach of trying to use his own state police to impound voting machines before this election is even over. He is the governor of the state of Florida, not an unelected autocrat who can use state levers to try to change elections to his benefit. We need to count the votes. We need to make sure that every valid vote is counted and we need to just follow the law. The governor has been able to get away with spinning conspiracy theories, ignoring his own past of trying to manipulate elections. It's time he's held accountable and we stop listening to these crazy conspiracy theories and just make sure that we count all the votes."

Frances Langum contributed to this post.

*** (I erroneously wrote in my original version that Brenda Snipes was a Republican, but she is not and I'm sorry for the mix-up)

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