Throughout her career, Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes has been accused of maintaining inaccurate voter rolls, counting ineligible ballots, prematurely destroying ballots, failing to meet election deadlines, and ignoring Florida’s sunshine laws. But despite her gross incompetence and repeated mistakes demonstrated over a decade of county service, it seems Snipes still has at least one supporter.
Money from billionaire liberal activist George Soros covered Snipes’ legal expenses in 2017 after a concerned civil advocacy group sued her for failing to purge county voter rolls of ineligible registrants.
Lawyers from Demos and Project Vote, both heavily funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, sprang to Snipes’ defense after the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) demonstrated that the election supervisor failed to take adequate steps to maintain accurate voter rolls.
Billionaire backer
Snipes recently found herself at the center of a Florida ballot count battle after Palm Beach County and her own district began adding newly discovered ballots days after the election deadline had passed, threatening to overturn the results in at least three major state races with national implications. On Tuesday evening, 634,000 votes had been cast in the county, but by Thursday night, Snipes was suddenly claiming that 712,840 ballots had been cast.
Besides missing multiple court-ordered recount deadlines, Snipes refused Republican demands to maintain oversight of the ballot-counting process and violated state laws by denying several public records requests. As a result, she now faces multiple lawsuits from the candidates affected by her recklessness and a “preliminary inquiry” from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“Brenda Snipes’ office has a record of gross incompetence,” said Danielle Alvarez, campaign spokeswoman for Rep. Matt Caldwell, the Republican candidate for agricultural commissioner whose lead was reversed by late Broward County votes. “Given the length of time it has taken her office to count votes and the history of Snipes’ past violations, we have concerns the law is not being followed.”
Constitutional contempt
Why does the Broward County elections chief seem to be blatantly disregarding Florida’s constitution without fear of reprisal? Perhaps Snipes is reassured by the team of high-powered attorneys that come courtesy of Soros-funded liberal activist groups, confident that her billionaire benefactor will bail her out of any legal bind she may face as a result of her flagrant attempt at electioneering.
That is precisely what happened in 2017, when lawyers from Demos and Project Vote rushed to defend Snipes after the ACRU proved that Broward County’s voter rolls failed to reflect the demographic realities of the electorate. To explain the “dead people, 130-year-olds, felons, duplicate registrations, invalid commercial addresses” and the “‘improbably high’ voter registration rates” reported by the Sun-Sentinel, Snipes admitted that some people who have been registered “are not eligible to vote and they slip through.”
“This is a huge job that has so many pieces,” Snipes said, citing Broward’s 1.1 million voters. “Sure, you’re going to have mistakes.”
That’s where Demos and Project Vote come in, apparently. Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, served as Snipes’ senior counsel in the case. He was joined by attorneys Catherine M. Flanagan and Michelle Kanter Cohen from Project Vote.
Demos claims that its primary function is to ensure “an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy.” Ironically, Demos insists that it is committed to seeking “true democracy by reducing the role of money in politics,” despite accepting untold millions from Soros and other big-name donors.
Common cause
Demos has made common cause with controversial partisan voter rights organizations like the now-defunct ACORN, which closed its doors years ago after its operatives were involved in a voter registration fraud scandal.
Snipes can also depend upon support from Project Vote, which works in lockstep with Soros’s Open Society Foundations to inflate the number of Democratic voters. The Soros-aligned group works at “registering voters in the United States and analyzing election law.”
“Another form of partnership is also of enormous importance to the Soros foundations: the relationships with grantees that over the years have developed into alliances in pursuing crucial parts of the open society agenda,” read an Open Society Foundations report referring to its partnership with Project Vote.
When Snipes — along with 248 other county election officials nationwide — was threatened with a lawsuit in 2017 unless she purged her voter rolls of deceased and ineligible voters, another Soros-funded political action group leaped to her defense. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School offered to represent county officials who were asked to do what the law requires of them.
Wherever controversial partisan battles are waged, Soros and his Democratic agents are nearby. As long as Brenda Snipes enjoys the support of Democrats with deep pockets, she has no reason to give up her game of making a mockery of her state’s constitution. Something’s got to give.
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