Ballot Harvesting in Palm Beach County

By William J. Skinner

Harvesting ballots is a common practice in Florida and it is not strictly illegal in each and every instance.  I first became aware of the practice of planting and harvesting absentee ballots in Florida while I was researching my book: South Florida Election Law Handbook, published in 2014.  This article is a refresher to help you understand one section of the laws concerning vote-by-mail ballots and three situations that describe different ways this is done.

            Florida law (F.S. 101.62(4)(c)4) provides that individuals may request for absentee ballots for themselves and immediate family, which is defined as a spouse, child, parent, sibling, legal guardian, or grandparent. You need to read this section of the law. Florida law also requires that if one is requesting an absentee ballot for someone else, they must provide certain identifying information. A violation of this law (F.S. 104.047) constitutes a third degree felony.  Look up Florida Statutes on www.myflorida.com/floridastatutes and read the many voting methods and requirements for requesting ballots and turning them in at the time of an election in Chapter 101.  If you do not have a computer or smart phone, go to the library to use a computer.

            Over the years Florida has frequently revised its enforcement of election laws to allow certain party election workers to handle absentee ballots.  There are still several concerns.  How many ballots can be picked up from voters by candidates and delivered to the elections office?  What if the ballot collection worker represented an opponent of the voter’s choice on the ballot?  Would these ballots be delivered or tossed in the trash?  Has there been uniform enforcement of law and regulations pertaining to the details of handling these ballots? The name of these ballots has been changed to vote-by-mail ballots or mail-in ballots more recently and the word “absentee” is no longer used.

Belle Glade – 2009       This situation involved multiple political party workers in Belle Glade ordering ballots for voters and monitoring when these were delivered to the voters in 2009. Then the worker knocked on doors and tried to help the voter prepare the ballot and then take the ballot from the voter to be delivered to the election office or maybe not deliver it anywhere.  The five pages of details of the Executive Investigation conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are reviewed in the book beginning at page 292. 

            For several days, investigators tracked down voters and witnesses to try to determine what was going on.  In the end, there was no reversal of any election.  Some people lost their vote because the people who tried to help them vote probably took advantage of them.   This episode explains what investigators have to do to document a case.

Loxahatchee Groves - 2015   Loxahatchee Groves had a city election on March 10, 2015.  On that date 22 voters came to cast ballots at the only polling place and told the election officials that someone had ordered absentee ballots for them. When Keith Harris lost the city election he sued the city election board members and the Supervisor of Elections on March 26, 2015.  The case was active for over four years in the Circuit Court until a voluntary dismissal was entered on May 30, 2019 dismissing the remaining parties with Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher being dismissed earlier.

            During the early days of this case a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) investigation was conducted.  On the date of the election 22 individuals that appeared at the election polls in person to vote complained to an elections poll worker that they received an unsolicited absentee ballot. Their information was documented and a list of these individuals was later provided to Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher for her review. In an effort to further the FDLE investigation, Bucher provided Special Agent (SA) Thomas a copy of the list containing the 22 individuals that appeared in person to vote on the day of the election along with copies of 153 absentee ballot request submission forms processed for the March 10th election. These forms memorialized the identity of those who absentee ballots were processed for during the time period of March 1, 2015 through March 4, 2015. These 153 forms represent a fraction of the 304 total ballots requested for this election.

            Following the interviews of several of the persons receiving the absentee ballots, the FDLE investigators concluded: “Steps taken by SA Thomas to unequivocally identify a suspect(s) or target(s) in this investigation yielded negative results, thus preventing the Office of the State Attorney from pursuing any criminal charges. According to ASA Marci Rex, a clear connection between the electronic source (computer type device) of where the request for the absentee ballots originated and its operator(s) would need to be determined in order to file and pursue a criminal conviction. A clear connection was not made in this case.”

            After this decision an effort was made by the investigators to determine the source of the devices used to request the ballots.  This led to the following conclusion in the investigative report: “In furtherance of this investigation, Special Agent (SA) D. Thomas after meeting with Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Marie Bucher, on March 12, 2015, was provided with internet protocol (IP) information for investigative purposes. Bucher requested this information from their (Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Office) online computer website vender (SOE Software) in response to SA Thomas' request to query certain computer database logs. The information provided revealed that the identified IP address was linked to over 100 online absentee voter ballot requests for the March 2015 election. The IP address was identified as a "Dynamic Internet Protocol address". SA Thomas learned that such IP addresses were derived from a pool of IP addresses and were assigned and reassigned as individuals' devices (computers, laptops, tablets, cellular telephones, etc.) logged on and off any particular computer network. The IP address identified in this investigation could have randomly been used by any number of internet users using any number of devices during the time period the more than 100 absentee voter ballot requests were made. As such, efforts to track the specific IP address for each of the absentee ballot email requests made became unsuccessful. On April 9, 2015, at approximately 10:00 a.m., SA Thomas, in further attempts to explore the possibility of identifying the IP address information he was provided, contacted SA W. Hernandez of FDLE's Computer Cyber Technology (Cybertech) Unit. SA Thomas, after explaining the circumstances regarding the IP address in question, requested SA Hernandez to make an additional attempt to obtain any available IP identification information. SA Hernandez, on April 17, 2015, informed SA Thomas via email communication that his efforts were met with negative results and that the IP address provided came back to a ‘dead end’.”  FDLE Case Number: MI-32-0049, Serial #: 26, 11/25/2015  More information about this case can be obtained from an article “Loxahatchee Groves councilman cooperating in absentee ballot probe” by Kristen M. Clark - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, Thursday, March 12, 2015 Source of Post article was http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/local/loxahatchee-groves-councilman-cooperating-absentee-ballot-probe/eOc6HpGl8U9ZpA9UHCFwjJ/ See also Circuit Court file in the 15th Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County, Case No.  50-2015-CA-003454-XXXX-MB

West Palm Beach – 2016  This case of ballot harvesting involved two candidates, one for state House, and one for County Commissioner.  The facts are extensive for this case and the Palm Beach Post assigned several reporters and photographers to research the election for an article published in 2017.  They reported their research at : https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/special-reports/winning-candidates-help-voters-fill-out-their-ballots/V0ieae6VcZNNWF6I9ylRdM/.  How the Post got the story?  Main authors were:  Alexandra Seltzer and  Lulu Ramadan.  Data reporter Mike Stucka, researcher Melanie Mena and staff writer Daphne Duret also contributed to this story.

             The research team reported the votes in three precincts as a small part of their extensive coverage of these election results.

PRECINCT 7186 Boynton Beach Civic Center	PRECINCT 7196 Temple Sinai, Delray Beach	PRECINCT 7174 Rolling Green Elementary, Boynton Beach
69% of all ballots were mail-in	62% of all ballots were mail-in	55% of all ballots were mail-in
378 total mail-in ballots	366 total mail-in ballots	135 total mail-in ballots
338 voted for Bernard	310 voted for Bernard	112 voted for Bernard
334 voted for Jacquet	302 voted for Jacquet	105 voted for Jacquet
August 30, 2016	Primary Election

Here is a series of comments from the authors of this extensive special article cited above. ‘For Bernard and Jacquet, the Aug. 30 primary meant outright victory. Nobody ran against them in the November general election.

“Powell comfortably beat Republican Ron Berman in November, and in his first few weeks as a state senator has introduced a few pieces of legislation.“One of them?  “A bill to make it easier to drop off vote-by-mail ballots.”

            Powell is Bobby Powell who was elected to the Florida Senate District 30 in November of 2016.  The Senate district does not include these same three precincts. So far Powell has not been able to get an amendment to Florida statutes to make it easier to drop off vote-by-mail ballots.  See Laws of Florida 2019-162 for amendments to F.S. 101.62 in 2019.  Protect your vote, read the election laws.

            The idea of ballot harvesting is gaining strength in states like California where the legislature approved it.  Florida voters must become aware of the consequences of harvesting ballots before more elections disappear under an avalanche of one party or the other taking advantage of loop holes. But ballot harvesting is illegal in North Carolina and many other states.  A Congressional election was ordered canceled after a lengthy Federal Court battle and done over because of ballot harvesting by a Republican in the 2018 election.