A Florida election worker claimed via sworn affidavit that she was terminated after she witnessed what appeared to be organized absentee ballot fraud.
Newsmax reported:
A temporary worker for the Broward County Supervisor of Elections Office in Florida has alleged in a sworn affidavit obtained by Newsmax that she was fired this week after witnessing possible absentee ballot fraud by office workers.
But the State Attorney’s Office concluded Friday that the workers were duplicating ballots by hand from damaged originals faxed by military personnel and that “there is nothing improper or illegal about the conduct” under state law.
“We were understandably alarmed about what she witnessed,” Bob Nichols, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, told Newsmax in an interview.
Nichols is general counsel for the Broward Republican Executive Committee, which learned of the allegations on Thursday. He interviewed the former employee and reported the matter that day to the state attorney.
“Our goal is to assure that all of the election rules are properly followed,” he told Newsmax. “We want a fair election for everyone.”
On Monday at around 8:30 p.m. the former employee was instructed to take a stack of absentee ballots forms to the Pitney-Bowes room at the Supervisor of Elections (SOE) office in Lauderhill, Fla., according to her affidavit.
The door to the room was locked and she claims she peered through the window to find that there were four workers sitting at a table with “stacks of documents and writing something.”
After she knocked on the door she had the stacks of documents taken from her by a SOE employee who she alleged “closed the door” and “seemed very rushed.”
The former employee had to come back again with a second stack of ballots and this time they let her enter the room: “I could see the four SOE employees sitting at the same table actively filling out election ballots,” her affidavit read, and noted that each worker “had a stack of blank ballots to the right of them … and a stack of completed ballots to their left.”
According to the former employee, each of these completed stacks consisted of “perhaps a dozen” ballots. She also said that the employees were “using the same black pens … that the SOE supplies to voters at polling places.”
She was told to leave the room by one of the employees and said in her affidavit that she didn’t mention this “to anyone at the SOE because of fear of retaliation.”
After lunch the next day, the former employee claimed that she was “met by a uniformed security guard at the SOE entrance and told that I had been terminated.” She added, “I was given no explanation for this action.”
Nichols told Newsmax: “I consider what she said in the affidavit to be very credible. She saw what she saw.” Newsmax reported: “His office took the woman’s statement Thursday and reported it to the State Attorney’s Office in Fort Lauderdale.”
If there was nothing improper about what they were doing, there sure seemed to be a great deal of secrecy. It will be interesting to see what comes of this because it seems awfully fishy.
