Florida: What Can Florida Do To Improve Its Voting System Before 2020? | WBUR

Florida’s voting system was called into question again after several high-profile recounts in the midterm elections. Florida will undoubtedly be a battleground in the 2020 presidential election, and the state will have work to do to improve the way it handles voting. From old ballot-processing machines to high levels of partisanship exhibited by election officials, there were a slew of problems with how voting was managed in Florida this year, according to Edward Foley, director of the election law program at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law (@OSU_Law). What happened this year in Florida’s elections that worries Foley the most ahead of 2020, though? Overheated rhetoric.

Florida: Florida Democrats hire investigator to look into altered mail ballot ‘cure’ forms | Tampa Bay Times

The Florida Democratic Party has hired an investigator to dig into altered “cure affidavit” forms sent out to voters whose mail-in ballots had missing or non-matching signatures, according to a statement released by the party’s lawyer. “Upon receiving notice of the allegations that the form was incorrect, FDP took immediate steps, including hiring an independent investigator to review the issues at hand,” read the statement by attorney Mark Herron.  “As soon as we know the results of the investigation we will advise you.” The move comes after the Florida Department of State sent a letter to federal prosecutors on Nov. 9 asking them to look into the forms, which they had received from voters in four different counties. The forms, which the voters had apparently received from the Democratic party, had an incorrect deadline listed at the top for mail-in ballots to be fixed: Nov. 8, instead of the real deadline of Nov. 5.

Florida: Vote-Stealing Battle in Florida Portends More Distrust in System for 2020 | The New York Times

The chaotic images out of Florida’s election recount last week — the brigade of Washington lawyers, the déjà vu meltdown of the tallying in Broward County, the vitriolic charges and countercharges — have prompted flashbacks among the electorate of the 2000 presidential election. Yet to the combatants in both parties fighting over impossibly tight races for governor and senate, the 2018 election was less about revisiting past political traumas than about setting the stage for the bitter 2020 campaign ahead. The legal and political skirmishing in the state, Republicans and Democrats say, has been an ominous dry run for messaging and tactics about fraud and vote-stealing that threaten to further undermine confidence in the electoral system. Florida emerged from the 2018 midterms with a fortified reputation as the nation’s most competitive battleground, a state whose political culture most closely reflects the slashing political style of its adopted son, President Trump — with candidates focused on energizing voters with visceral, at times over-the-top, messages.

Florida: A Judge Upheld Florida Rules Requiring “Magic Words” And “Consistency” To Determine Voter Intent | Buzzfeed

A federal judge in Florida late Thursday rejected a constitutional challenge by Sen. Bill Nelson and Florida Democrats to state rules that govern how counters in a recount determine what candidate a voter meant to choose on their ballot. The decision on the so-called “magic words” and “consistency” rules came as Florida officials undertake on a hand recount in the close US Senate race between Nelson and Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Nelson’s lawyers argued that the rules could unconstitutionally imperil the votes of thousands of Floridians. US District Chief Judge Mark Walker held that they were “neutral, reasonable, standard” practices. “They are uniform, nondifferential standards that provide a reasonable procedure to determine the intent of voters. This is not to say the rules are perfect or the best way to do things. But they are constitutional,” Walker wrote in his opinion. Under the “consistency requirement,” a vote won’t be counted if the voter didn’t mark their preference in the same way throughout their ballot. For instance, if a voter filled in a box in one place, and wrote a check mark in another place, those votes wouldn’t be counted.

Florida: Recount did not alter outcome of Senate race, but it set the rules of engagement for 2020 | The Washington Post

Two days after Election Day, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) got a call from President Trump’s reelection campaign manager: Get to Broward County, Florida’s Democratic stronghold, where officials were still tallying ballots in a tight U.S. Senate race. Around the same time, Marc Elias, a top Democratic Party lawyer who was general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, was preparing to fly to Florida to lead a likely recount in that contest. Over the next eight days, armies of lawyers and party operatives swarmed the state as elections officials undertook a laborious recount of the Senate vote and two other statewide elections, racing into courtrooms and onto the airwaves and social media to jockey over every ballot. In the end, the exhausting fight did little to change Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who conceded in a phone call to his GOP rival Sunday. But there was much more at stake in the nation’s biggest presidential swing state: the rules of engagement for 2020.

Florida: Florida orders first statewide hand recounts ever, as legal fights continue | Miami Herald

An unprecedented statewide hand recount is now under way in the Sunshine State, further extending a muddled, high stakes battle over every last vote in Florida’s crucial U.S. Senate race. But, barring a legal challenge, the race for governor is over. Following a five-day machine recount of the more than 8.3 million votes cast in the Nov. 6 election, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered hand recounts Thursday afternoon in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott, and also the race for agriculture commissioner between Nicole “Nikki” Fried and Matt Caldwell. The race for governor, which also went through a machine recount, was outside the margins that trigger a manual recount as new tallies came in, making Republican former congressman Ron DeSantis the governor-elect a full nine days after Democrat Andrew Gillum first conceded. … Gillum, who explicitly revoked his election night concession Saturday as a machine recount began, did not re-concede Thursday, if there is such a thing.

Florida: Sloppy Signatures Placed Thousands of Ballots in Limbo | The New York Times

The nuns at Zina Rodriguez’s Catholic school in the Bronx thwacked her knuckles to punish sloppy handwriting, so she was shocked when her mail-in ballot in Florida was rejected because her signature did not match the one on record with elections officials. Ms. Rodriguez, a registered Democrat, found the rejection notice in her mailbox at 7 p.m. the night before the Nov. 6 election, two hours after the deadline for appeal had passed. When she protested at the Palm Beach County Board of Elections the next morning, she learned that the culprit was a driver’s license signature, hastily squiggled on an electronic signature pad two years earlier. “There were 13 amendments on that ballot. The only reason I chose to write in was because I wanted time to research all the questions. I was fulfilling my responsibility,” said Ms. Rodriguez, 47, a behavioral health care consultant from Lake Worth, Fla. “All of that got thrown away because I wanted to get out of the D.M.V. office as fast as I can. It is incredibly upsetting.”

Florida: ‘We chose not to fix this’: Florida’s new election crisis, 18 years after Bush v Gore | The Guardian

The judge’s indictment was damning. “We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election,” the US district judge Mark Walker told a court in Florida on Thursday. “And we chose not to fix this.” The midterm elections took place more than a week ago. New members of Congress are posing for photos on Capitol Hill in Washington. Yet the Sunshine state is still counting votes in the knife-edge US Senate race between the Republican Rick Scott and the Democrat Bill Nelson. It has been a tortuous 10 days of chaotic leadership, catnip for lawyers, protesters in the streets, clapped-out counting machines and partisan allegations of incompetence and worse. Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist, said bluntly: “Florida is where good elections go to die.” He should know. Shrum was a senior adviser to Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, which all came down to Florida. Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state and co-chair of George W Bush’s statewide campaign, announced that he had won the state – and with it the presidency. At first Gore, phoned Bush to concede but, as the margin tightened, he called back to withdraw his concession.

Florida: Bill Nelson sues to block fax, email votes from Bay County | Miami Herald

Less than 24 hours since his last suit was filed, Bill Nelson is suing Bay County again. The incumbent candidate for U.S. Senate, who has filed three other lawsuits in the past week, is suing Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen to stop any ballots received via email or fax from being counted. The second round of unofficial returns is due from the counties at 3 p.m. Thursday. The supervisor told the Herald/Times Monday that 11 ballots were accepted by email and 147 ballots were domestically faxed in, though state statute does not allow emailed ballots, and faxing in ballots is only permitted for military and voters overseas. Andersen was not aware that a lawsuit had been filed until he received a call from a reporter Thursday inquiring about the filing.

Florida: Miami-Dade launches hand recount of 10,000 uncounted ballots in Scott vs. Nelson | Miami Herald

A room full of Miami-Dade election workers began a hand recount Thursday night of more than 10,000 problematic ballots cast in the U.S. Senate race, joined by a room full of lawyers and volunteers from both campaigns eager to contest votes for the other side. The county that still hasn’t lived down its chaotic role in the 2000 presidential recount returned to the grueling manual reckoning required under Florida law for a pair of exceptionally close statewide races. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, leads incumbent Bill Nelson by about 12,000 votes statewide in the Senate contest, and Democrat Nikki Fried is ahead by about 5,000 over Republican Matt Caldwell in the race for agriculture commissioner. Miami-Dade plans to start the mandated hand recount of more than 30,000 problematic ballots in the agriculture race after it concludes the review of the Senate ballots.

Florida: New lawsuits may extend recount deadline | Miami Herald

Florida’s recount of the midterm elections continued to unfold on Tuesday with new plot twists and a nail-biter narrative, as Broward County’s embattled elections supervisor finally began recounting ballots and candidates filed new lawsuits challenging state laws that govern the process. Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who announced that she likely would not seek re-election when her term expires in 2020, said her office began recounting more than 700,000 votes shortly before noon while workers also sorted ballots for the three relevant statewide races: U.S. Senator, Florida governor and commissioner of agriculture. Though Broward started its recount three days after Miami-Dade began preparing to re-tally more than 800,000 ballots, Snipes said she was confident that her office will finish by Thursday’s 3 p.m. deadline to deliver results from the machine recounts to the state. That’s because Broward has fewer votes to count than its neighbor county to the south, and uses faster high-speed counting machines. “There hasn’t been a deadline that we’ve missed,” Snipes said.

Florida: Federal prosecutors reviewing altered election documents tied to Florida Democrats | Politico

The Florida Department of State last week asked federal prosecutors to investigate dates that were changed on official state election documents, the first voting “irregularities” it has flagged in the wake of the 2018 elections. The concerns, which the department says can be tied to the Florida Democratic Party, center around date changes on forms used to fix vote-by-mail ballots sent with incorrect or missing information. Known as “cure affidavits,” those documents used to fix mail ballots were due no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 5 — the day before the election. But affidavits released on Tuesday by the DOS show that documents from four different counties said the ballots could be returned by 5 p.m. on Thursday, which is not accurate. Audio of a Florida Democratic Party caller leaving a voicemail message asking a Palm Beach County voter to fix their vote by mail ballot after Election Day, which is not allowed, was also sent to POLITICO separately. It was not part of the information turned over to federal prosecutors.

Florida: Nelson campaign files new lawsuit over unconventionally marked ballots | The Hill

Sen. Bill Nelson’s (D-Fla.) campaign filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to bar Florida’s top elections official from rejecting unconventionally marked ballots. The lawsuit, filed in federal court by both Nelson and the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm in Tallahassee, asks a judge to ensure that the Florida Department of State does not disqualify ballots where selections are marked in different ways, so long as the voter’s intention is clear. A ruling in the lawsuit could be key in determining whether numerous ballots are tallied if the Senate race in Florida goes to a hand recount. The lawsuit argues that Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office could reject ballots on which a voter may have marked a selection in more than one way.

Florida: Palm Beach forced to start over after voting machines overheat | Miami Herald

Palm Beach County’s race to recount votes is heating up — literally. The county’s decade-old ballot-counting machines overheated and gave incorrect totals, forcing the county to restart its recount of about 175,000 early votes., supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said Tuesday night. The department has flown in mechanics to repair the machines. “We’re disappointed by the mechanical problems that are going to cause a further delay in the recount,” Bucher told reporters. “It became evident through the vigorous pace of counting that the machines used for the recount were starting to get stressed.” The malfunctions resulted in the loss of more than a day’s work. Bucher said on Monday that her office wouldn’t be able to meet the 3 p.m. Thursday deadline imposed by the state. On Saturday, state election officials said Florida’s 67 counties had to recount the more than 8 million ballots cast statewide because the results in three major elections — U.S. Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner — were under the 0.5 percentage point threshold that triggers the mandatory recount, according to state law.

Florida: Amid recounts, frustration grows for those whose votes didn’t count | Tampa Bay Times

As Florida’s races for senator, governor and agriculture commissioner undergo recounts, David Kendall Casey, watching from Atlanta, feels even more annoyed. The 24-year-old graduate student at Georgia State University said he wanted to vote. He checked in with his local elections office in Pinellas County and believed he had ordered a mail ballot. But it never arrived. “It’s literally mathematically getting more important as it gets closer,” Casey said of his vote. He assumed his preferred candidate, Andrew Gillum, would win easily, but Gillum did not. The Democrat conceded, then didn’t, and the race between him and Republican Ron DeSantis is undergoing a machine recount. “This is exactly why I was super excited to vote this year,” Casey said. “It makes you just so despondent about the process. … That power was sort of taken away from me.”

Florida: Palm Beach County recount delays caused by old voting machines | TCPalm

While other supervisors of elections throughout the state have remained confident that they will complete recounting ballots cast in November, Palm Beach County’s elections supervisor remains skeptical they will complete counting each race subject to recounts by the Thursday afternoon deadline set by the state. Susan Bucher has repeatedly asked for additional funding to update antiquated voting…

Florida: Inside the Republican Strategy to Discredit the Florida Recount | The New York Times

The concerted effort by Republicans in Washington and Florida to discredit the state’s recount as illegitimate and potentially rife with fraud reflects a cold political calculation: Treat the recount as the next phase of a campaign to secure the party’s majority and agenda in the Senate. That imperative — described by Republican lawyers, strategists and advisers involved in the effort — reflects the G.O.P.’s determination to tighten its hold on power in the narrowly divided Senate. The outcome of the Florida race will decide whether the party controls as many as 53 seats and has a freer hand to confirm Republican-backed judges with the vote of the man at the center of the recount, Gov. Rick Scott, who is trying to oust a three-term Democrat, Bill Nelson. With the Democrats capturing a Republican-held Senate seat in Arizona on Monday night, the recount fight in Florida becomes even more consequential.

Florida: Bay County allowed some hurricane victims to vote by fax or email. That’s not allowed. | Miami Herald

As counties recount ballots in three statewide races and lawyers battle over the complex vote tallying in court, the top elections official in Bay County said he allowed some displaced voters to cast ballots by email or fax after Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle, even though there is no provision for it in state law. Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen said Monday that 11 ballots were accepted by email and 147 ballots were domestically faxed in, though state statute does not allow emailed ballots and faxing in ballots is only permitted for military and voters overseas. But Andersen defended his decision to accept those ballots by email and fax vigorously, noting the mass devastation that rocked the coastal county one month ago. “You did not go through what we went through,” he said, describing areas that were shut off by law enforcement and people barred from returning to their homes. “If some are unhappy we did so well up here, I don’t know what to tell them. We sure had an opportunity to not do well, I can tell you that much.”

Florida: Counties race to recount votes by Thursday | Miami Herald

Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner was aware of recount issues that surfaced in Broward County on Sunday, but said through a spokeswoman that the issues were resolved. The county had an issue during the logic and accuracy testing, spokeswoman Sarah Revell, but the recount is now underway. Logic and accuracy testing is required so that any potential issues can be corrected before a recount begins. On Saturday, the razor-thin margins in the races of U.S. Senate, agriculture commissioner and the governor’s race caused Detzner to order mandatory machine recounts in all three statewide races after all counties submitted their unofficial results by noon. The state’s 67 elections departments have just five days to recount more than 8.2 million combined ballots cast over an entire month leading up to Tuesday’s midterms. On Sunday, the numbers remained tight.

Florida: A Mysterious ‘Undervote’ Could End Up Settling the Florida Senate Race | The New York Times

The vote count in Florida’s Senate race keeps getting tighter. Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson, is down to 15,000 votes, and it’s likely to narrow further as provisional and late overseas ballots are counted. As the initial count concludes, one issue will loom over the result: a substantial undervote in Broward County, the state’s most Democratic county, and the possibility that the ballot design, which might have made it harder to find the Senate choice, will ultimately cost the Democrats a Senate seat. An undervote is when a voter casts a ballot but doesn’t vote in one of the contests on the ballot. At the moment, there are a lot of undervotes in the Senate race in Broward. If Mr. Scott ultimately prevails by a margin of 10,000 votes or less, the undervotes in Broward County could be what cost Mr. Nelson the race. Broward County has reported about 25,000 fewer votes cast for Senate than for governor, a difference of about 3.7 percent. That means voters left their Senate choice blank, or the choice was not counted because of a tabulation error like an equipment problem. This is highly unusual, and there’s nothing like this discrepancy elsewhere in the state. Immediately across the county line in Miami-Dade County, about the same number of people voted in the Senate race and the governor’s race.

Florida: Rick Scott’s monitors agree with state cops: No Florida voter fraud | Politico

Gov. Rick Scott asked state law enforcement to investigate Broward County election officials because of potential “rampant [voter] fraud,” even though monitors from his own administration say they have seen none in that county. “Our staff has seen no evidence of criminal activity at this time,” Department of State spokeswoman Sarah Revell wrote in an email on Saturday. Scott is the state’s current governor and the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate with a narrow lead over incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) That assessment, which was first reported by the Miami Herald, jives with that given by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which said Friday it has also seen no allegations of fraud.

Florida: Something Very Odd Happened With Broward County’s Ballots in the Florida Senate Election | Slate Kim

Florida has retained the championship belt for election shenanigans, as three statewide races could be headed for a recount. The gap between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson, in the election for the latter’s Senate seat, has only continued to narrow. The race was already within the 0.5 percent margin needed to trigger a recount on Wednesday, when Scott had roughly a 35,000-vote lead. That’s been cut in half to about 17,000 as ballots have continued to come in. While Scott is still the favorite to ultimately win, FiveThirtyEight has shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” One reason for hope for Nelson is that a traditionally Democratic area, Broward County, has so far reported fewer votes for the Senate race compared with the gubernatorial race, according to data compiled by MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki. In other Florida counties, no such discrepancy exists. While some of the discrepancy could be due to genuine undervotes—for instance, the design of the ballot may have led some voters to miss it and not vote in that race—it’s possible that the county hasn’t correctly counted all the ballots. About 24,000 ballots in Broward County registered a vote in the governor’s race but not for the Senate race.

Florida: Recount possible in Scott-Nelson race for Senate seat | Miami Herald

Nothing comes easy in Florida elections. The tightest U.S. Senate race since at least the 1970s was too close to call on election night and now appears headed for a recount. Republican Gov. Rick Scott was clinging to a 25,920-vote advantage over Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson as of Wednesday evening — or just 0.32 percent of the 8.1 million ballots cast by Floridians. State law allows for a machine recount of the results if the two candidates are separated by one-half of a percentage point or less. The race is well within that margin. “We are proceeding to a recount,” Nelson said in his only public remarks since results started coming in Tuesday.

Florida: Facing national microscope again, Florida braces for several recounts | Tampa Bay Times

Florida’s chief legal officer, Secretary of State Ken Detzner, told county election supervisors Thursday to plan for statewide recounts and for extraordinary public and media scrutiny in the state with the singular status of unusually close elections. “The recounts will be nationally watched … (we’re) under a microscope,” Detzner said on a conference call with counties. Detzner did not specify a number of races. Statewide races for U.S. Senate and commissioner of agriculture are within the machine recount window of half of 1 percent, according to incomplete and unofficial statewide returns. A third race, for governor, is at present slightly outside that threshold. Detzner’s boss, Gov. Rick Scott, is at the center of one of those possible recounts. Scott declared victory over Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson late on Tuesday in the Senate race, but the two men were separated on Thursday morning by .26 percent of more than 8 million votes.

Florida: In Broward County, fewer votes in Senate race raise recount questions | Miami Herald

As Florida’s bitterly narrow race for U.S. Senate appears it will meet the threshold for a lengthy manual recount, all eyes in the state are turning — yet again — to Broward County. Numbers being reported from one of the state’s bluest bastions are raising questions about why so many fewer voters appeared to choose a candidate in the U.S. Senate race, Florida’s most nationally prominent office on this year’s ballot. As of Thursday evening, 676,706 votes had been counted in Broward in the U.S. Senate race, according to the Broward Supervisor of Elections website, overwhelmingly for Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson over Republican Rick Scott. But nearly every other statewide office garnered more votes in Broward than the Senate race, particularly the contest for governor, with 24,763 more voters — 701,469 in all — weighing in.

Florida: A month later, hurricane trips up Florida Panhandle voters | Reuters

Christy Todd said she is a regular voter in Mexico Beach, the oceanfront Florida Panhandle community nearly obliterated by Hurricane Michael less than a month ago. But she sat out Tuesday’s elections. “There’s so much going on, I just couldn’t make time for it,” Todd, 40, said, donning a dust mask as she made her way into the remains of the small house she had rented for the past five years. Todd, who sells apparel on eBay, said she probably would have voted Republican in Tuesday’s elections, which will decide if U.S. President Donald Trump’s party maintains control in both houses of Congress. But Todd said she did not know where to vote and had no time to find out. Having lost most of her roof in the hurricane, she has been living out of her car and sleeping at the homes of relatives since the storm struck.

Florida: Voters approve Amendment 4 on restoring felons’ voting rights | Miami Herald

About 1.2 million convicted felons in Florida will automatically have their right to vote restored, thanks to a ballot measure that received about 65 percent of the vote Tuesday. At least 60 percent of voters had to approve it for Amendment 4 to become law. For the past seven years, felons have had to wait five years after completing their sentence to even apply to have their voting rights restored. The movement to reform the state’s notoriously strict restoration process was championed by the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a bipartisan group led by convicted felons. The group collected more than 800,000 signatures to qualify Amendment 4 for the 2018 ballot.

Florida: Key to election security, Florida’s voter rolls have troubled tech history | Palm Beach Post

Long before Florida’s online voter registration system malfunctioned and temporarily throttled back new registrations last month, long before Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher called it a glitch-prone “mess” in need of review, Florida’s system for maintaining voter registration records was dogged by reports of serious flaws. Everything from software security to unauthorized access to voters’ personal information were among the problems cited in Auditor General reports and follow-ups from 2006 through mid-2015. Last month, Bucher discovered a new problem: Just as Floridians are poised to head to the polls for the most contested midterm elections in recent memory, the state’s brand new online voter registration system crashed. Voter registration, and how those registration records are kept, is more than a tech-induced headache. When Russian-sponsored hackers tried to worm their way into the elections systems of 21 states in 2016, state-housed voter registration records were prime targets.

Florida: Young voters’ ballots more likely to have glitches | Gainesville Sun

Around the state, counties have seen an increased amount of ballots cast through early voting and mail-ins that are far exceeding those tallied during the 2014 midterm election. Election Day is still a week away but voters have already been making their voices heard by casting their ballots early. Since tragedies like the high school shooting in Parkland that left 17 people dead, some young voters have eagerly awaited the midterms to vote on issues that matter to them: gun control, health care and education. Around the state, counties have seen an increased number of ballots cast through early voting and mail-ins that are far exceeding those tallied during the 2014 midterm election. As of Tuesday, more than 3 million people had already voted, according to the Florida Division of Elections, an uptick of nearly a million ballots compared with this time in 2014. About 1.8 million of those ballots were mail-in ballots.

Florida: Extended early voting, but no fax or email ballots for storm-ravaged counties | Florida Politics

Bay, Calhoun, Franklin, Gadsden, Gulf, Jackson, Liberty, and Washington counties are all still facing existential challenges regarding recovery from Hurricane Michael. On Thursday, Gov. Rick Scott rolled out an Executive Order outlining the way forward. Supervisors of elections in the affected counties can extend early voting, beginning next Monday. Poll watchers have until Oct. 26 to register, and vote-by-mail ballots can be forwarded to different addresses, an accommodation for displaced voters. The media release does rule out voting by fax or email. “In the hardest hit areas, communication via phone, fax and email remains challenging and would be an unreliable method for returning ballots. Additionally, past attempts by other states to allow voters impacted by natural disasters to fax or email ballots have been rife with issues.”