Meanwhile in Georgia and Florida

The state Democratic Party on Sunday filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to tell counties they must count ballots rejected for what the party says were “arbitrary reasons.”

[...]

Last night, the state elections board instructed acting Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden to instruct all Georgia counties on how to process mailed-in ballots. What those instructions were we don’t know.

In the Seventh District, Democrat Carolyn Bordeaux’s campaign has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking that Gwinnett County delay certification of votes because the county has some 1,000 absentee votes that haven’t been counted.

In other words, a certain amount of messiness is implied in close elections.

[...]

We can rule out some motives [for Brian Kemp's desperate attempts to stop the ballot counting]. As the Florida governor’s contest has reminded us, concessions are not binding. They are political statements, not legal ones.

Nor, we hope, is this about Kemp wanting to be addressed as “governor-elect” in the media for the next eight weeks. If he’s due the title, that will come soon enough.

We can also rule out that the Kemp campaign is actually trying to pressure Abrams to do something she’s not inclined to do. A campaign that implies that a female African-American opponent is consorting with an armed “Black Panther Party” only 24 hours before Election Day can’t seriously believe it has increased its persuasive hold on her a week later.

But Kemp’s hostility does have much to do with Stacey Abrams and whether she continues as a cause celebre among Democrats.

There is the longer-term threat she might pose to U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who is up for re-election in 2020.

But more immediately, there’s the question of whether Abrams and her turnout machine can dispense with a Democratic jinx and help John Barrow win his statewide Dec. 4 runoff against Republican Brad Raffensperger.

Clearly, Abrams recognizes the importance of controlling the office of secretary of state.

[...]

Kemp’s not trying to persuade Abrams to concede. He’s trying to make sure that his own people don’t stand down -- and that hers do.

Over the weekend, former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich was critical of the way Republican Brian Kemp ran his race for governor.

[...]

Gingrich said Kemp paid too much attention to the strong GOP vote in South Georgia and ran a campaign about small ideas, ignoring Atlanta, where most of the votes, and the sort of ambitious policies that might have appealed to them.

“Brian Kemp, who did a very effective job in the primary, ran a primary election in the general election,” Gingrich explained. “He spent almost no energy trying to reach suburban and exurban women and he came close to losing.”

  Atlantic Journal Constitution

We hope he DID lose. And why isn't Newt Gingrich back under his rock somewhere?

Remember that time, a year ago two Sundays ago, when Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced he had launched an investigation into the Democratic Party of Georgia and whether its employees and volunteers had engaged in attempting to hack the state’s voter registration database?

This morning, we contacted the Democratic party’s executive director, its chairman, and its representative on the state election board. None have heard a peep from law enforcement.

Counting unlawful votes. Destroying ballots. Sunshine Law violations. Busted deadlines.

So many controversies have bedeviled Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes — culminating in her office’s troubles in the aftermath of Florida’s chaotic 2018 elections — that her days in office are now numbered, insiders and lawmakers say.

She’s losing support from fellow Democrats and faces the increasing likelihood of an embarrassing suspension from office at the hands of either Gov. Rick Scott or his likely successor, Ron DeSantis.

  Politico

We hope Scott's successor is Andrew Gillum. And if he is, if this is all true about Snipes, he'd better be prepared to sideline her, too.

Removal proceedings in the GOP-led Florida Senate could also cause a possible rift among Florida state Senate Democrats if the black caucus rallies around Snipes in the same way it did around her predecessor, who was also African-American, more than a decade ago.

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If Snipes is suspended by the governor, incoming Florida state Senate President Bill Galvano said it’s time to have his chamber investigate and prepare to strike the final blow by removing her from office — just as the chamber did to her predecessor, Miriam Oliphant, for mismanaging the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

“What she’s demonstrated over the years is a series of mistakes that rise above the level of negligence and into incompetence,” Galvano said. “We can’t continue to keep ignoring this and every option should be on the table.”

[...]

Democrats say Snipes has privately confided that she plans to quit, but it’s unclear when. “I hope it’s soon,” said one state Senate Democrat who declined to be named. “Otherwise, she’s a goner.” Heading into the election, Democratic campaigns fretted about what her mismanagement would do in the second-largest Democratic county in the state.

[...]

Scott’s lawsuit also references another lawsuit his campaign successfully brought against Snipes last week after she failed to provide public information concerning the votes she had left to tally after Election Day — information that should readily be at her fingertips and that, under Florida’s Sunshine Laws, she should have disclosed.

Snipes was unwilling or unable to provide the data, and her office didn’t follow state law requiring regular vote tally updates every 45 minutes, Scott’s new lawsuit alleges. Then, in the dead of night, the office suddenly uploaded tens of thousands of new ballots in the Democratic-heavy county, causing Scott’s margins statewide to fall so far that it triggered a recount, with his margin in the race against Sen. Bill Nelson falling below a half percent.

[...]

To cap it all off, the recount was supposed to start at 7 a.m. Sunday. But a number of technical glitches delayed the official start of the recount of the more than 700,000 ballots until just before noon. At the last minute, Snipes also admitted to mistakenly including 22 absentee ballots that, under state law, are considered “illegal” because the voter signature of the envelope they were contained in did not meet the voter signature on file.

[...]

The ultimate irony is that the Broward County ballot design approved by Snipes might have cost Nelson — not Scott — tens of thousands of votes. The race was tucked in the lower left-hand corner of the ballot, just under the instructions, and many voters appear to have missed it. Indeed, for the first time ever, the top-of-the-ticket Senate race received fewer votes than all of the other down-ballot statewide matches, including the contest for agriculture commissioner, which is also headed to a recount.

[...]

“Scott shouldn’t kick her out of office. He should send her flowers,” an insider connected to DeSantis said sarcastically.

[...]

However, the parade of horribles leads to one question that Scott’s spokesmen won’t or can’t answer: Why didn’t he suspend Snipes before if, as his suit says, she “has a long and troubling history of violating Florida election law, especially in close elections?"

That's a very good question.

What's wrong with Florida? They have a long history of election shenanigans and incompetence.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: