An unofficial ballot box that’s been used for at least a decade at one of Broward’s big condominium communities, during high-stakes national elections and lower-profile city elections, is now getting some scrutiny.
Peter Antonacci, who was appointed county supervisor of elections last year to clean up voting in Broward, learned about the use of the box this week and doesn’t like it.
He said it’s a warning sign of the potential for fraud in Florida elections, although he said he hasn’t seen evidence of fraud in this case. “I didn’t hear anything that rose to that level. It certainly has my antennae humming that the potential is there.”
The use of the box to collect vote-by-mail ballots isn’t explicitly banned by state law — nor is it authorized, Antonacci said. Prompted by discovery of the box, his office website now contains this warning: “Please do not deposit your vote-by-mail ballot into unauthorized, so called ‘BALLOT BOXES.’”
Innocent intent
The box — colloquially referred to as a ballot box even though it isn’t an official receptacle for ballots — was seen as a way to help voters, said Mikkie Belvedere, a Coconut Creek city commissioner and past president of the Wynmoor Democratic Club.
Belvedere said the locked box has been placed in the library at the Wynmoor Village condominium community in Coconut Creek every election for at least a decade.
The idea, Belvedere said, was to provide a convenient way for people to turn in their completed vote-by-mail ballots, known for years as absentee ballots. It started at a time when the county didn’t pay for return postage on mail ballots.
And, she said, many people don’t want to rely on the Postal Service to get their ballots back to the Supervisor of Elections Office by the deadline. Florida law requires ballots to be at the Elections Office by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Postmarks don’t count, so if a ballot is delayed in the mail it won’t be counted, something that routinely happens in all elections.
Volunteers, including Belvedere, would drop off the ballots at an authorized Elections Office site.
She said unsigned, unsealed ballot envelopes were never accepted. There was never any attempt to help or coach voters. And ballots were taken from anyone, regardless of party, even though the effort began under the auspices of the Wynmoor Democratic Club.
Belvedere said she wasn’t sure how long the box had been used; she said she inherited it from a previous Wynmoor Democratic Club president, Gert Weinberg, who died in 2015 at age 98.
“It’s a service that we were doing for our residents,” Belvedere said. “We had no idea that anyone had any objections to it.”
Candidate compliant
It’s an invitation for impropriety, said Ryan Ross, who is running to oust incumbent Coconut Creek Commissioner Becky Tooley in Tuesday’s city elections.
He complained to the three-member county elections Canvassing Board, which consists of Antonacci, County Court Judge Florence Taylor Barner, and County Commissioner Michael Udine.
Ross said later by email he wasn’t alleging wrongdoing, but said by email that “we need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in our elections.” He said it was “affecting voter confidence in the process.”
Canvassing Board members weren’t happy with the practice when they heard Ross’ complaint at their Wednesday meeting.
“You probably shouldn’t give your ballot, entrust it, to somebody who’s going to bring it to the supervisor [of elections] for you. The postage is free,” Udine said later.
Without evidence of wrongdoing, the Canvassing Board voted to accept a couple of dozen ballots that had been turned in via the box.
And Antonacci — who was appointed elections supervisor last year by then-Gov. Rick Scott after the governor suspended Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes over problems with mid-term election vote counting — put the warning on his office website.
Warning sign
Though he saw no evidence of wrongdoing, Antonacci said he’s concerned about anything that could lead to so-called “ballot harvesting” by political campaigns.
Unscrupulous political operatives “are going to say, ‘Here’s your vote by mail. Have you voted yet? Oh, you haven’t? Can I help you? You don’t want to put it in the mail, it’ll never get there. Give it to me.’ The potential for abuse is very high.”
That’s what happened last year in North Carolina, where the results of a congressional election were thrown out because of the way mail ballots were collected by a consultant working for the Republican candidate. The election is being redone later this year.
State law changed starting with the 2014 elections to prohibit campaigns from paying people to collect ballots and return them to county elections offices. The prohibition was aimed largely at boleteros who collected ballots in Miami-Dade County and had been connected to fraud.
Under the current law, which allows volunteer ballot collectors, abuse could become “very common in Florida,” Antonacci said. “It’s a fungus. It’s going to spread. And at some point something scandalous will happen, unfortunately.”
aman@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4550 or Twitter @browardpolitics